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PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



PLOTS AND 
PERSONALITIES 

A NEW METHOD OF TESTING AND 
TRAINING THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION 

BY 
EDWIN E. SLOSSON, Ph.D. 

EDITOR OF SCIENCE SERVICE, WASHINGTON, FORMERLY LITERARY 
EDITOR OF "THE INDEPENDENT,' ' NEW YORK, AND ASSOCIATE 
IN THE COLUMBIA SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM. AUTHOR OF 
"CREATIVE CHEMISTRY," "MAJOR PROPHETS OF TO- 
DAY," "GREAT AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES, ' ' "THE 
AMERICAN SPIRIT IN EDUCATION," ETC. 

AND 

JUNE E. pOWNEY, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING, 
AUTHOR OF "GRAPHOLOGY AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HAND- 
WRITING," "THE HEAVENLY DIKES," "WILL- 

ETC. 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1922 



•'s 



Copyright, 1922, by 
The Century Co. 



Printed in U. S. A. t 



S> 



M -3 IS22 

©CI.A674421 



^ 



T 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. How the Book Came to Be Written and What 

It Is "About 3 

II. How to Use the Personals in Testing the 

Imagination 7 

III. The Interpretation of a Personal 26 

IV. Training the Literary Imagination 43 

V. Names and Clothes as Literary Accessories . . 59 

VI. Tricks of the Literary Imagination 74 

VII. What Kind of Mind the Novelist Needs ... 86 

VIII. Where the Writer Gets His Plots and Person- 
alities 103 

IX. The Problem of the Plot 127 

X. Character-Creation 141 

XI. Plot-Making as a Safety-Valve 164 

XII. The Case-System of Literary Training .... 179 

XIII. Putting a Foot-Rule on the Imagination . . . 208 

XIV. Miscellaneous Personals 226 

XV. Personals in Continuities 232 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



CHAPTER I 

HOW THE BOOK CAME TO BE WRITTEN AND WHAT 
IT IS ABOUT 

For seventeen years I was hired to read the London 
" Times" every day. The " Times' ' presents an unprom- 
ising exterior. The front page, instead of the shrieking 
head-lines of an American paper, designed to give the 
impression that this is the first day of the Apocalypse, 
is one gray mass of minor advertisements. But running 
down the middle of the page is a column of more general 
interest although it is headed ' ' Personal. ' ' I have often 
found myself fascinated by these Personal advertise- 
ments when I should have been digging out facts about 
foreign affairs in the pages beyond. 

Here was a part of the paper where the authors paid 
for permission to print instead of being paid to write. 
They wrote what they pleased, not what the editor 
wanted them to write. They were intensely earnest for 
the most part, often in dire distress. This section of the 
paper is with good reason called the " agony column," 
for here is real tragedy intermingled with comedy and 
co m mercialism. These advertisements are human docu- 

3 



4 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

merits of the first order, all put in tabloid form as is now 
the fashion. Why wade through pages of sentimental 
slush when here you can get the essence of a plot in four 
lines with the personalities sufficiently outlined so that 
any one with an imagination can develop the situation 
to suit himself? When a lady asked Disraeli to recom- 
mend her a good novel he replied: "Madam, whenever 
I want to read a good novel nowadays I have to write 
one." I found these germ stories more interesting than 
the diluted fiction of the magazines. When an author 
has to pay by the word instead of being paid by the word 
he takes more pains to make every word count. With 
a few Personals from the "Times" in my pocket I was 
secure from boredom on the subway and need not waste 
my eyesight and my money on magazines. 

Next I tried them out on my friends. But the re- 
action I got was curious. Some took to the idea at sight, 
and having much more vivid imaginations than I, 
evolved most exciting situations and fascinating charac- 
ters. Others found the Personals silly or worse and 
obviously thought the same of me for my interest in 
them. Then too the same name and message would be 
interpreted in the most varied ways by different people 
and I discovered that I could find out a great deal about 
the disposition and habit of mind of a person, even of 
a stranger, by what he or she made out of one of these 
anonymous fragments of feeling. It was great fun to 
pass a Personal around a company and ask them alj to 
write down or to tell at once what they saw in it. Some- 
times a latent talent for story-telling would be revealed, 
much to the delight of the person and the rest of us. 



THE GAME OF PERSONAL 5 

With the Personals pasted on cards one could make a 
novel and interesting game. I soon got more delight ont 
of seeing what my friends would do with them than in 
what I could make of them myself. Professor "Walter B. 
Pitkin of the Columbia School of Journalism found these 
Personals so useful as exercises in plot development that 
he put two pages of them in his course .on ' ' How to 
Write Stories^" published by the Independent Cor- 
poration. 

It seemed then that I had hit upon a new form of 
psycho-analysis comparable to dream interpretation, 
reverie, association-time, and the like. Here also was a 
test of the creative imagination which might do for this 
faculty what the new intelligence tests developed out of 
the Binet-Simon method did for determining alertness, 
accuracy, memory, judgment, etc. Possibly, it appeared 
to me, the scheme might be used not merely for testing 
the native power of imagination but also for developing 
and training it. It might serve as a form of vocational 
guidance and nip in the bud the aspirations of the young 
people who wanted to write fiction but lacked the funda- 
mental qualification for it; that is, the ability to seize 
upon a hint of a plot and expand it into a thrilling and 
convincing novel. If these thousands of ambitious but 
incapable writers could be headed in some other direction 
the lot of the literary editor would be alleviated. 

The best person that I knew of to try out the possi- 
bilities of such a plan was Dr. June Downey of the 
University of Wyoming, who had for years been making 
a study of the psychology of esthetics, especially of 
literary composition. I sent her a set of clippings from 



6 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

the " Times' ' and she used them in her classes at the 
University of Chicago as well as Wyoming with remark- 
able results. Some of these were published in the 
"Independent'' of 1921 in an article entitled "Have 
You Any Imagination?" and this together with an 
article by me in the "Independent" of March 6, 1920, 
on "A Game of Personalities" aroused such an interest 
not only among teachers of composition and psychology 
but also among literary aspirants and other persons who 
for various reasons found the idea stimulating that it 
seemed worth while to get out a book that would contain 
a wide selection of the Personals and other suggestive 
clippings with directions how to use them for testing 
and developing the creative imagination. 

To this book Professor Downey has contributed some 
chapters giving in untechnical language the results of 
her researches on plot-making and character-construc- 
tion and I some chapters on the fictional faculty and its 
use based upon my long experience as literary editor. 
In this partnership volume we have not attempted to 
eliminate all divergence of view or even an occasional 
contradiction, but that need not worry the reader any 
more than it does us for we have initialed our own 
sections. The object of the book is not to impose our 
ideas upon the reader but to stimulate him to germinate 
ideas of his own. For that reason we have put at the 
end a lot of "Times" Personals as well as head-lines 
from American newspapers. If the reader gets as much 
fun out of them as we have we shall be well paid for our 
trouble in preparing the book. 

E. e. s. 



CHAPTER II 

HOW TO USE THE PERSONALS IN TESTING THE IMAGINATION 

Measuring what the college-boy describes as "the void 
above the eyes" has become a fashionable pastime. The 
use of Binet puzzles, Thorndike examinations, and in- 
formation-tests has multiplied since the military psy- 
chologists used them "to sort out major-generals from 
mere privates. ' ' "Where the thing will end no one knows. 
I have heard of a family where discussions between 
husband and wife are terminated by her meek conclu- 
sion, "Your I. Q. [short for intelligence quotient] is 
higher than mine, so of course you 're right — always!" 
— a remark which, oddly enough, so exasperates the in- 
telligent gentleman that he sometimes reverses himself. 

But among intelligence-tests, tests of the imagination 
have been conspicuously absent. This book is to break 
territory in the latter field. Since the imagination is 
intelligence at play, one may approach the task in holi- 
day spirit. Not to waste a moment of your vacationing 
— from more serious pursuits — I am going to start you 
off at once. 

Test 1. Below you will find a message sent via the 
personal column of the London "Times" by Sweetie 
to Jasper. You will be given five minutes in which 

7 



8 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

to write a characterization and description of Jasper 
and Sweetie. 



JASPER.— Tick-tock, Tick-tock.— Sweetie. 



Time 's up. Put aside what you have written and 
try another. 

Test 2. This also is an item from the personal column 
of the London " Times.' ' It is addressed to Feathers 
by Skeine. Please work out a short-story plot from the 
message. Time-limit, ten minutes. 



TpEATHERS.— One on the left.— Skeine. 



Time 's up. Pencils down ! Let us now proceed to 
your dissection of yourself, dear reader. And we beg 
of you to keep your temper even though you don't agree 
with our diagnosis, for remember there are more things 
in heaven and earth than story-writers, and that if you 
can't write a novel you may be living one, which on the 
whole is much nicer. 

Please classify your imagination under one of the 
following heads after you feel from study of the samples 
presented and the comments that you understand the 
distinctions. The divisions are as follows : 

(1) The Inert Imagination. 

(2) The Stereotyped Imagination. 
*(3) The Melodramatic Imagination. 

(4) The Generalizing Imagination. 

(5) The Particularizing Imagination. 

(a) Reminiscential. 



THE INERT IMAGINATION 9 

(b) Creative. 

(c) Dramatic. 

(6) The Ingenious or Inventive Imagination. 

The question of fertility and range of imagination we 
will discuss later. 

1. Of the inert imagination, the most hopeless variety- 
is that of the individual whose narrow sympathies pre- 
clude the possibility of an insight into characters or 
situations outside the range of his own experiences. 
Invention stumbles along, continually hampered by the 
narrow skirts of custom and etiquette. 

Read the following production as an example of what 
I mean: 

Newspaper personals are usually disguised statements 
understood only by the parties concerned. It would be 
impossible for me to form any idea of the above as I 
have never had any interest in such ads. Always had a 
quiet notion that they were most disreputable, veiled 
messages, perhaps between thieves or other undesirables. 
There is apparently no necessity for code messages be- 
tween ordinary persons. 

Or this: 

Any such items in newspapers always appeal to me 
as sentimental and foolishly so. I noticed that the mes- 
sage was signed "Sweetie" and addressed to a man, so 
immediately put it in this class. The very fact of using 
a newspaper column as a means of correspondence shows 
her lack of self-respect and restraint. I am not inter- 
ested enough to have a visual image of her. 



10 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

You will perceive we are getting characterizations, 
but not of Sweetie and Jasper. 

Of course, inactive fantasy shows itself sometimes by 
its puzzled rather than unsympathetic attitude. It 
stares helplessly at such a message. i 'I can't think what 
it means!" Or, "No plot. 'One on the left' suggests 
buying a theater-ticket." 

A very distinctive reaction is given by the literal- 
minded individual, those dear friends of ours who walk 
in comfortable house-slippers and continually stir our 
sense of humor in the cleverest sort of way without in 
the least meaning to. 

I can not refrain from illustrating this reaction by 
quotation of what I received when I used the following 
personal : 



SIR WALTER RAWLEIGH.— On Sunday 
morning at eleven o'clock, I will be in 
exactly the same spot as you saw me last 
Easter Monday evening. — Queen Bess. 



I asked for a characterization of Queen Bess and got 
it! 

Queen Bess has dark hair and eyes. She is very sedate 
in her manner and always on time. When she makes a 
promise she keeps it. If she were n'ta queen I think 
she would be a good housekeeper, clean and neat, every- 
thing just so. 

And take this one of Valerie who writes to Wal: 



TyAL.— In this case two and three do not 



make five. — Valerie. 



THE STEREOTYPED IMAGINATION 11 

Valerie is a person rather inclined to say and do 
funny things, sometimes taking them very seriously. He 
is educated, thinks of the hypothesis of numbers, and 
says two and three do not make five. He is hasty in 
making decisions. 

Another form of the unimaginative reaction gives us 
words, words, words! 

Jasper is a working-boy who is in love with a certain 
working-girl and has been corresponding with her. I 
should say he is of average intelligence but at present 
concerned in a somewhat affected love-affair. Probably 
he has not been or probably he has been at college. 
"When a character is in love it is difficult to tell just how 
much he does know. Jasper is a young man of the city 
and possesses the knowledge which the city man neces- 
sarily must have of amorous affairs. The rest developed 
by the thought which arose from the knowledge of cer- 
tain observations of the ways of the world. 

If now you belong to the household of the unimagina- 
tive either because of crippled sympathies, baffled wits, 
honest literal-mindedness, or utter inanity, the proba- 
bility is you 're wasting your time in literary pursuits. 

2. Let us turn next to the stereotyped conventional- 
ized imagination which always hits upon the bromidic 
interpretation, just that which will occur to ninety-nine 
out of one hundred. As our psychological friends say, 
the coefficient of commonplaceness will run high and 
normality is guaranteed. And obviously there are ad- 
vantages in such reactions, for the ninety and nine will 
understand you without effort and you will find their 
motives easy to follow. If you write stories there will 



12 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

be nothing cryptic about them, nothing fantastic or 
strange that would deny them entrance into " Popular 
Tales.'' 

Confess now, when you read the Jasper-Sweetie item, 
did n 't you figure it out something like this : Sweetie is 
a pretty, fluffy, doll-like, cream-puff creature with golden 
hair, blue eyes, and too much saccharinity. Very likely 
you dressed her in sky-pink, gave her a large hat and a 
parasol, and possibly a stick of gum. You thought her 
sufficiently silly. But you rather liked Jasper. You 
pictured him as gentle, slow, steadfast, with brown eyes, 
and much imposed upon by the frivolous and very young 
lady calling herself Sweetie. 

"Tick-took" is some sort of love-message of course. 
"Time flies/ ' or "I 'm counting the moments until you 
return," or "Really, dear Jasper, you are very slow," 
or "Let us meet under the big clock." 

I have read so many interpretations of this message 
thus or similarly phrased that I am quite convinced that 
Jasper and Sweetie are a sentimental couple and that 
Sweetie takes too much initiative for a well-bred young 
lady. I am almost convinced by the repeated suggestion 
that she is a "perfect blond." And of course I have 
never questioned the assumption that Jasper was a man 
and Sweetie a woman. 

3. But let us now go a step further and inspect the 
hackneyed imagination in gala dress. Behold the melo- 
dramatic, the yellow- journal imagination! Let us see 
what we can get out of Valerie's message to Wal, "In 
this case two and three do not make five." 



THE MELODRAMATIC IMAGINATION 13 

Valerie, of French descent, a face clear-cut as a cameo 
and of the same delicate tints, framed with masses of 
burnished brown ringlets! She dresses, usually, in 
lavender with white near her pure Grecian profile. She 
is so tiny and delicate that no one would suspect her of 
great strength of character but think her a plaything to 
be loved and petted until one gazed into her eyes, lus- 
trous deep pools of violet. She looked out on life with 
eyes that saw and understood. 

"Wal, her second cousin, dark, quick-tempered, im- 
petuous, trying to sweep the world off its feet by his 
painting ! He lives in the gay capital of France among 
the artistic set of upper Bohemia. His devil-may-care 
air elects him leader of a set that makes even the blase 
gasp and take notice. Consequently his art suffers. 

Coming home for a brief visit he chanced to see the 
lovely Valerie and fell desperately in love. She did not 
return his advances and he wrote her a poetic letter in 
which he says destiny came out in mathematical terms, 
since she had beauty and wealth and he had love and 
hope and genius. The sum was five. But alas ! Valerie 
answers, ' ' In this case two and three do not make five. ' ' 

The encouraging thing about the sensational imagina- 
tion is that though pruning is suggested, there is really 
something there to prune. Let us cite two more ex- 
amples from a young romanticist to whom facts (includ- 
ing those of orthography!) are stranger than fiction. 
Let us give her an exchange of messages between Sybil 
and Leonard, thus: 



SYBIL. — Fantastic dreams disturb my 
rest; my mind is tortured by visions 
of gaunt and grisly specters; you alone 
possess the philter that will charm away 
these wraiths. — Leonard. 



14 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



LEONARD.— It is strange that you should 
be tortured so ; nevertheless, even If I 
can charm away the ogres. I do not know 
that you deserve it. — Sybil. 



The Man — Tall, slender, deep-blue eyes; high fore- 
head, from which is combed back waivy light brown hair. 
Leonard is yet young; and has not learned the ways of 
the many people in this world. He still goes to school, 
and it is at a dance that he has met the charming 
butterfly Sybil. 

Naturally like many young people he thinks all she has 
told him is true ; he has willed himself to fall madly in 
love with the fair damsel. He is extremely dramatic, 
high-minded, and in future years will be a benefit to 
society. But as yet his education is not set, and he 
rather wishes to show that he can be above the average ; 
he is well read and intelligent but has not learned the 
ways of girls. 

The Girl — Sybil; dressed in a pale pink evening- 
gown, her slender figure is very attractive ; her soft rosey 
cheeks are surrounded by beautiful fluffy well-curled- 
and-puffed blonde hair; her baby-blue eyes are bright 
and sparkling, giving her a much brighter look than she 
really deserves. 

Her baby-way, merry ringing laugh, constant flatter- 
ing, ever changing way of talking makes her very siren- 
ish. It is not Sybil's intention to be a faithful sweet- 
heart to one particular man ; she enjoys herself with all ; 
and blames herself not when some poor unwise fellow 
like Leonard takes seriously her thoughtless words. She, 
like the rest of the girls of to-day, is very modern. 

4. The Generalizing Imagination. The inclination to 
deal in thought with the general, the type, instead of 
the particular or the individual, is a mental trait which 
has had momentous consequences in the development of 



THE MATHEMATICAL IMAGINATION 15 

intelligence, since it has resulted in capacity to handle 
classes rather than specific instances, to think concep- 
tually instead of always in terms of individuals. In 
science, in philosophy, in business, it has enabled us to 
label things and then react quickly as suggested by the 
label. This is a case of scarlet fever, hence an occasion 
for establishing quarantine, writing out a certain pre- 
scription, giving disagreeable orders without being side- 
tracked by one's sympathies for the pretty girl whose 
complexion is under suspicion. 

All X is Y, all Y is Z, all X is Z, chants the logician, 
and of course he is right. All doctors are men, all men 
are fallible, all doctors are fallible, only we dislike put- 
ting Dr. Tom, Dick, and Henry together so undiscrim- 
inatingly. 

The most persistently generalizing types among men 
are the philosopher and the mathematician. It is im- 
possible to individualize a mathematical formula, so long 
as it stays in a text-book, minutely enough to tell the 
color of its hair or the length of its mustache. But 
when it has succeeded in escaping from the monograph 
we know exactly what Mr. A 2 + B 2 looks like ! 

The generalizing type of mind, however valuable in 
the workaday and scientific spheres, is not the most 
promising type for the maker of stories. Eemember 
Flaubert 's teaching of Maupassant. ' ' Having impressed 
upon me the fact that there are not in the whole world 
two grains of sand, two insects, two hands, or two noses 
absolutely alike, he forced me to describe a being or 
an object in such a manner as to individualize it clearly, 
to distinguish it from all other objects of the same kind." 



16 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

If you find yourself inclined to classify Sweetie as 
"just any shop-girl," Skeine as the "usual crook," 
Sybil as the ' ' every-day flirt, ' ' take yourself in hand and 
train yourself, as Flaubert trained Maupassant, to see 
individuals, not types. 

5. The Particularizing Imagination. This is the 
imagination that the successful writer of stories must 
have, that is, if he has the right kind! For one may 
particularize in the wrong way and be the reminiscen- 
tial individual, all whose imaginations are, so to speak, 
mere memories. Thus: 

My procedure in getting characters for Jasper and 
Sweetie was as follows: Whenever I hear names I in- 
stantly review my list of acquaintances and see them 
clearly if they have a similar name. Jasper I have de- 
scribed exactly as I saw him in reality ; in like manner 
came the girl-image Sweetie. I saw her the moment I 
saw the name just as she appeared when I worked in 
the same place with her. 

One may actually be so fettered by one's own past 
that he thinks it dishonest to make a good story better 
by changing the time, the place, or the girl. One should, 
of course, borrow from Life all that one can persuade 
Life to loan, but then one should put this capital out 
at interest. Never let your conscience interfere with 
literary profiteering. 

The individualizing imagination seeks to create a 
character or incident which shall be one of its kind: 

Jasper is standing by a table. He is dressed in a large 
black and white-checked suit. He has a high forehead, 



THE INVENTIVE IMAGINATION 17 

not intellectually conditioned but due to the baldness 
which, is encroaching upon cerebral territory. He has 
dancy brown eyes and a foolish large mouth. He does 
not stand steadily upon his feet and is holding something 
too daintily between his fat thumb and forefinger. 

Or take this reaction to the item : 



THE AMALGAMATED AGONY ASSO- 
x CIATION will soon be wound up. 
Happy results expected shortly. — Terror. 



Billie Blowbummell, thirty-four years old, impatient, 
intractable, and changeable, has learned that his divorce 
proceedings will soon give him his freedom. He is at- 
tempting to communicate with Mrs. Billie No. 2, via 
press. Cautious, as well as impetuous, he would like to 
be discreetly indiscreet. He is large, fat, slow with a 
slight limp in one leg, which hesitancy of action is car- 
ried to his mental indecision and lands him in predica- 
ments in spite of his caution. He is proud owner of a 
peanut-stand, in his lucider intervals. 

If, in addition to individualizing characters, you find 
that your characters appear with a background and that 
they are doing something, you may feel greatly en- 
couraged. 

6. The Inventive Imagination. One other trait be- 
sides that of the particularizing touch is essential to the 
literary imagination. There must be some measure of 
mental flexibility, * some possibility of invention, of 
striking out new combinations. 

Let us return to Jasper and Sweetie. Of two score 
individuals who characterized Jasper and Sweetie for 
me, only three departed from the conventional sex- 



18 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

suggestion conveyed in the names and read something 
into the item other than a flirtation. 

Possibly success in characterization is more a matter 
of the creative individualizing touch, success in plot, of 
ingenuity and invention. Let us therefore turn to the 
message sent by Skeine to Feathers and gage the orig- 
inality of our returns. This message demands more 
invention to handle it at all and it is therefore not sur- 
prising to find that more reject it as unmeaning and 
declare themselves incapable of weaving a plot around it. 

Yet even here we find much community of ideas. The 
most common interpretation is one of communication 
between accomplices in crime, the prevailing idea being 
that a robbery is incubating. "One on the left" desig- 
nates the house or the box or the man who is to be 
victimized. 

Next in favor is the theater story. Feathers now 
becomes the vampish chorus-girl, in the garb of a pea- 
cock or skirted with ostrich-plumes, and Skeine is com- 
municating to her the one to be watched, either the 
domestic encumbrance in the box "on the left" or the 
fatuous millionaire to the left of the cold-blooded Dives. 

Other interpretations include an auction story in 
which the object that is to be bid in is the "One on 
the left"; or the story of a man-milliner's attempt to 
sell to the fabulously rich lady the hat "on the left"; 
or a business story and the purchase of the oil-well on 
the left. A humorous story — rara avis — is suggested; 
an assault by Feathers on Skeine 's enemy on the left. 
But Feathers' sense of direction is confused by his ap- 
proach to the scene and he beats up the wrong man! 



THE SOUND OF A NAME 19 

Again, since the girl walks on the left, this cryptic mes- 
sage refers to the girl in the case, who is in the wrong, 
but the man gets left, a suggestion which in turn needs 
interpretation. 

Of course plausibility as well as originality needs to 
be graded in these reactions. Originality without plausi- 
bility lands us in the fantastic, just as plausibility with- 
out originality lands us in an amplification of the 
obvious. 

As a side-light upon how your imagination functions, 
it is well worth your while determining where your 
characters and plots come from, by what working of 
association they are called out. 

"Feathers," one of my collaborators writes, "a float- 
ing bit of material, consequently one not held down to 
regular work or by conventions. ' ' 

"Skeine, a continuous thread, often tangled in un- 
winding, suggests deceit.' ' 

Experiment shows that there are individuals so sensi- 
tive to the tiny arabesque of curves and angles or 
phonetic values that make up a name, that they actually 
have suggestive power. Only — and here 's the rub in 
application — there is little agreement even among those 
keenly sensitive to the facial profile of a word. Pre- 
occupation with word-physiognomy is evidenced in the 
report I am now quoting: 

My process of reaction is as follows : The sound of the 
names suggests the pictures. Sweetie and Jasper are 
both light-headed, the long "e" .sound of the former 
suggesting greater degree of near-imbecility than the 
short "a" of Jasper. The single syllable (nearly) of 



)5 



20 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

the first name suggests a short figure ; the delayed enun- 
ciation of the second a taller one (just as it takes longer 
to raise eyes to a tall figure). No. 1 is impetuous; No. 2 
is conservative, even-tempered (name is almost spondaic) 
and has depth (production of "a" in throat and "p 
by lips), therefore wide change — gives character a sort 
of second dimension. 



One question can only be stated here, but it is worthy 
of thoroughgoing investigation. I refer to the distinc- 
tion between spontaneous and deliberate invention and 
to the question whether the former is a mark of the 
creative imagination. With the evidence at hand it is, 
I think, very rash to conclude that the floating into 
consciousness of plots or the sudden introduction to 
lively characters is the only guarantee of an imagination 
worth working. Apparently some imaginations do most 
of their work below the threshold of consciousness and 
others do their drudgery in full daylight awareness, and 
the only thing that counts from the literary point of view 
is the results. 

In any case there can be no question that plot-making 
and character-making grow by practice and that one can 
acquire the habit of having inspirations. It is as an aid 
in the acquisition of such a good habit that we are 
appending a number of Personals, with suggestions as 
to the various uses to put them to. You can do your 
mental gymnastics and conduct your self-examination at 
the same time. 

(1) First of all, you should discover whether you more 
naturally go from characters to plot or from plot to char- 
acters. Do you start from the names and their suggest 



TRY IT YOURSELF 21 

tion of personalities or from the message with its sugges- 
tion of incident? Plot-making and character-feeling 
draw their vitality from somewhat different roots, and 
knowing which tendency is the stronger in yourself you 
are better able to use your talent effectively. 

(2) To test the fertility of your imagination it is well 
to determine how many plots you can get out of one and 
the same message, or how many Personals you can find 
plots for in a given time. 

(3) By working over the messages as a group-exercise 
or pastime, it is possible to get a notion of one 's common- 
placeness or originality in invention. We have already 
suggested that nine out of ten hit upon the obvious in- 
terpretation. What do you do ? Undoubtedly there are 
times when the obvious interpretation gives one the 
most interesting story of all. Never to catch the hint 
that is conveyed to the average reader might put in 
question one's rapport with human nature. Common- 
sense realism has a big place in literature and too 
fantastic invention might well land one in manifest 
absurdity. 

(4) Ingenuity may be further stimulated by weaving 
a plot about several messages taken together. They may 
or may not be connected on the face of it. 

Here are two that are : 



FRED. — Any soap, any candles? — San- 
aa <ro 



'AUSAGE.— No thanks, but a box of 
' matches. — Fred. 



22 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Or this : 



er>EAR LITTLE FRIEND.— Does Omar 
U XXXII state the position 21st March, 
920?— A. 



P- 



MAR XXXII.— I don't think it does 
somehow. — Pauline. 



Of course you hasten to pull out your Omar and find 
that Verse XXXII reads: 

There was the Door to which I found no Key, 
There was the Veil through which I might not see; 
Some little talk a while of Me and Thee 
There was — and then no more of Thee and Me. 

(5) To exercise the imagination in controlled inven- 
tion one may give the message with a particular sugges- 
tion, ' * Get a tragedy out of this ; a comedy out of that. ' ' 
Or ' ' Let this Personal he the introduction or the climax 
of a short-story." 

The giving of negative suggestion is another way of 
stimulating the imagination. Thus ' ' This is not a detec- 
tive-story " ; ' ' This is not a flirtatious message " \ ' ' Don 't 
look for a code in the message." 

The late Professor Royce of Harvard University once 
reported a most interesting experiment on the psychology 
of invention, in the course of which he used what he 
called the " stimulus of the unlike." He asked for a 
design as unlike the copy as possible. Invention proved 
to be definitely fertilized just by the attempt to be 
different. New schools in their effort to be different have 
sometimes produced extremely bizarre and fantastic 



NEGATIVE SUGGESTION 23 

works of art which have nevertheless fertilized the con- 
ventional art of their epoch. 

So our Personalities may be used with some such 
negative suggestion. Choose a very obvious item as "So 
it was only a wonderful dream after all," and ask for 
a story in which plot and characters shall depart as far 
as possible from the one suggested. 

To show what reactions one of these Personals may 
arouse in a group I add one of the letters received in 
response to the first publication of the method: 

San Francisco. 
Dear Dr. Downey: 

I want to tell you how much I enjoyed your article in 
the "Independent" of May 20, 1921. Last evening I 
recalled some of the ads at the dinner-table and decided 
to try one of them on the group assembled. 

I selected the most promising fellow (at least the one 
I thought would be most promising) and said, "Charles! 
I want to test your power of imagination. The following 
ad appeared in the personal column of a London paper : 
'Jasper. — Tick-tock, tick-tock. — Sweetie.' Tell me about 
Jasper and Sweetie, and give me the story connected 
with the ad." 

I had scarcely finished speaking when Charles began : 

"Jasper is a man about thirty-five years of age. If 
he were younger, Sweetie would have called him * Jaspie' 
or 'Jasp.' Sweetie is nineteen, rather adventurous and 
the daughter of a well-to-do man who strenuously objects 
to his daughter receiving attentions from any men. He 
in fact keeps her so closely guarded that she has great 
difficulty in leaving the house. 

"The house in which the girl lives with her father is 
an old-fashioned rambling dwelling with a heavy 
paneled oak door and a large, rather dark hall with a 



24 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

grandfather's clock in one end of it. Access to the 
father's study can be gained through a narrow passage- 
way leading off the hall. An inlaid oak floor covers both 
the hall and passageway. In front of the grandfather's 
clock is a rug. The girl is in the habit of spending the 
long evenings curled up in a cozy nook of the hall, 
reading. ' ' 

Sweetie met Jasper at some school-girl function, but 
I omit his explanation here. He went on : 

"It was Sweetie's idea that at half -past seven each 
night Jasper should noiselessly slip through the front 
door into the hall, to meet her, and should her father 
approach Jasper was to jump into the grandfather's 
clock and there remain until called out by her gentle 
call, l Tick-tock, tick-tock. ' The plan worked admirably, 
and the lovers were always warned of the approach of 
the father by his heavy footfalls on the inlaid flooring 
of the passageway. 

"One night the couple quarreled and Sweetie told 
Jasper that she never wished to see or speak to him 
again. Two long days tortured their way through life, 
and on the morning of the third day, while shopping, 
she called at the office of the newspaper and inserted 
the ad. Jasper saw it and at seven-thirty, etc., etc." 

Some one else, a lady of about forty, spoke up after 
Charles had finished, and said : ' ' That 's a very clever 
imagination you have, but I think there is no doubt as 
to the correct interpretation of the ad. ' Tick-tock, tick- 
tock,' certainly means two o'clock, and the people con- 
cerned were two very ordinary people who had agreed 
upon that plan of telling each other when they would 
meet. The place was always the same." 

Two of the boarders agreed with this speaker, one 



JASPER AND SWEETIE 25 

emphasizing the explanation by saying that it certainly 
was the logical solution of the " problem.' ' 

I want to thank you for having furnished a most 
enjoyable dinner. I intend to try it out on others later. 
How would you class Chariest 

J. E. D. 



CHAPTER ni 

THE INTEBPRETATION OF A PERSONAL 

There are two ways of working out the meaning of 
a "Times" Personal: (1) the impressionistic, (2) the 
analytical. The impressionistic mind may catch the 
hint from the names and wording and work out the idea 
according to his own fancy regardless of the probability 
of its correctness. The analytical mind will endeavor to 
deduce the actual facts from the clues contained in the 
item itself. 

The impressionistic mind needs no prompting, so let 
us consider the method of analysis. The first point that 
arouses one's curiosity is why the advertisement was 
published at all. The minimum charge for an insertion 
in the Personal column of the "Times" is ten shillings. 
This is for two lines, and each additional line costs five 
shillings. This at the normal rate of exchange means 
nearly $2.50 at the least and perhaps $3.75 or more. 
Now a letter can be sent for a penny and a telegram for 
sixpence, and a conversation costs nothing. A London 
telephone is highly inconvenient but can be used in an 
emergency. So why advertise? Evidently because the 
ordinary channels of communication are closed. This 
opens various avenues of speculation. One possibility 
would be that the said party of the first part does not 

26 



LOST ADDRESSES 



27 



know the address of the said party of the second part. 
.That is obviously the case with the following: 



HHODDY. — If you are anywhere in this 
- 1 - wide, wide world write immediately 
to game address you left. — Jamie. 



DX\[ T -Toronto. No letter— Please 



write. — Dad 



A A — Come home at once; urgent.- 



Mother 



CYNTHIE, dearest, your absence is dis- 
tressing us; write to us immediately, 
that we may know you are well. — Mother. 



pYNTHIE.— You will be sorry by and by, 
^ and then it will be too late to remedy 
things ; be honest with yourself now, and 
look facts squarely in the face. — Sidney. 



JOB.- 



Communicate with me. — Fred. 



-REGENT'S PARK, Sunday last, white 
- L * / gloves and violets. Will tall, fair lady 
enter Regent's Park Sunday next, same 
hour, same gate, to meet worshiper of 
beauty? If impossible, kindly fix other 
flay and hour, signing street where first 
met.— Tophat. 



T ADD IE. — Come home at once, you fool- 
±J ish boy ; we don't want to spend an 
unhappy Xmas. — Pater and Mater. 



If it is a message of affection we may surmise that the 
lover has been forbidden the house and the stern father, 
acting on the authority conferred by British law, inter- 
cepts his letter. Or it may be the lady returns his 



28 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

letters unopened and he hopes to catch her eye involun- 
tarily. Sometimes a lover who has left for parts un- 
known is appealed to by the girl he left behind him. 
If it is necessary to advertise why choose the 
" Times"? It is the most expensive of English dailies 
and has not the widest circulation. On the other hand 
it is the best-known and highly esteemed and is to be 
found in every British club and in reading-rooms all 
over the world. Its selection as a medium of communi- 
cation implies a certain class standing in the hierarchy 
of British society for the two parties coming into com- 
munication. Then, too, the Personal column in the front 
page of the " Times" is a unique and historic institution. 
It is without a rival though it has many imitators. A 
prominent New York paper some years ago started a 
Personal column of this sort but it was suppressed by 
the police because it was used for immoral purposes. 
The London " Times 's" column is carefully guarded. 
This was especially the case during the war. The Ger- 
mans took particular pride in keeping the London 
" Times" on display in the cafes and news-stands, when 
it could be procured, as a contrast to the British and 
American policy of suppressing German papers. Here 
was an obvious channel of communication with enemy 
countries by code, and many patriotic Britishers wrote 
to the editor or to the Government demanding the sup- 
pression of the Personals. These indignant protests must 
have been amusing to the British Intelligence Office 
which was using the column as a bait to German spies 
and ran down every unauthenticated person who offered 
an advertisement. On the other hand the " Times" was 



CODES AND CRYPTOGRAMS 29 

extensively used by parents in communicating with their 
boys in the trenches and it often happened that a mes- 
sage published in the Personal column reached the 
soldier more quickly and surely than a letter or telegram. 
In time of peace there is no objection to code adver- 
tisements, and if we want to find out what a particular 
Personal really means we must consider the possibility 
of it« being a blind. The most romantic item may cover 
a commercial transaction. For instance: 



"TVAMOZEL. — Bver longing for news. 
- L/ Won't you write? Ever true: lore; 
merry Xmw. — Baby. 



may be a notification to a chain of apothecary-shops 
throughout the United Kingdom to raise the price of 
soap. Or this quotation from " Mother Goose'': 



WAGGLES.— "The little dog laughed to 
see such sport." — Bernard. 



may be the instructions of a broker to his agents to 
sell Marconi short. But such cryptograms need not 
bother us if we do not care to find out the truth but 
only to arrive at a plausible and interesting surmise. 

Let us then consider the conditions under which this 
newspaper correspondence is conducted. Here are two 
people who want to communicate with each other — or at 
least one person who wants to communicate with another 
— and the ordinary channels of speech, post and tele- 
graph are for some mysterious reason unusable. They 
must therefore send a private message through a public 
medium. It is as though they were imprisoned in 
second-story rooms on opposite sides of the street and 



30 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

had to shout their secrets over the heads of the passers- 
by. The message then must be so worded that it will be 
intelligible only to one person out of the thousands who 
may see it. How shall it be addressed? Initials are 
often used but have the disadvantage that several other 
persons may have the same letters and so the advertiser 
gets what in the telephone exchange is called the l ' wrong 
number." Occasionally we find in the Personal column 
a frantic protest that the message of, say, W. S. B. to 
C. E. was answered by a wrong C. E. and needs to be 
contradicted. The use of Christian names is almost as 
ambiguous. For instance : 



t 



ACK. — Please remember your promise 
last November. Very ill. — Rosy. 



More than one Jack may have forgotten his promise of 
last November and neglected his Rosy. Let us hope that 
they are all conscience-stricken by this piteous appeal. 
When a Silent Worshiper appealed to a Shy Lady 
for permission to approach, no less than three shy ladies 
asked for particulars, two of these advertisements ap- 
pearing in the same issue of the ''Times": 



SILENT WORSHIPER.— Was shy lady in 
members' friends' pavilion at Lord's 
on Monday and Tuesday? 



WHERE did Silent Worshiper meet Shy 

»» Tnrtv last timp? 



WILL Silent Worshiper give date of last 
meeting? Uncertain identity. — S. L. 



THE WIGHT IN GRAY 31 

It is evident from the following that there were more 
than one pair of Laughing Eyes directed at some Wight 
in Gray : 



T ArGHING EYES.— Oh! bmr could y»n?| 



Wight in Gray. 



THE WIGHT IN GRAY thanks the ier- 
A eral pairs of Langhinz- -7r= :':r their 
manifest interest in him, but regrets that 
his absence in the country for a few days 
prevents Tittp from re - : ■:::■:■?. 



Apparently the Wight in Gray was so mneh tickled 
by the various bites at his hook that he tried it again 
with a new bait : 



\fISS BI*UB MIST.— I, in mT garret all 
- LlLL forlorn, think of my ladye fayxe, and 
wenld wonder if she thinks of me. and 
wonder if she cares. — The Wight in Gray. 



Doubtless this plea softened the hearts of various ladies 
in gauzy-blue garments toward their gray-clothed ad- 
mirers. 

Messages addressed to Sweetheart, Dearest, or their 
French equivalent can hardly be classed as " Personal " 
since they may be accepted by many others than the one 
to whom they were intended. Such ambiguous addresses 
lead to complications like the following : 



° 



aWKHTHBABT mine. Loving kisses. 
Ever thine. 



32 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



EVER GRATEFULLY.— Was the message 
to SWEETHEART on the 10th from 
you, cheri? I did not reply before because 
I cannot be sure. But should it have been, 
then I understand, for that explains; and 
I do believe and will willingly forgive you 
everything. Only you must learn never to 
distrust me any more; it hurts us both, 
and you know you have always found that 
you were wrong. Promise me; and don't 
be afraid of anything. — Yours. 



CHERI.— If you will only own the truth, 
dear, then believe me everything will 
come out right. There is nothing to fear, 
for I do understand, though it may not 
an so. If you doubt me again because 
of what has happened remember it alters 
nothing of what I have already told you. 
Circumstance drove me, but I have never 
really doubted you. Will you not end this 
misunderstanding without waiting any 
more? The days we never can recall are 
slipping so fast. — Cherie. 



CHERI.— I wonder if my Mr. Man. What 
initials? If correct, will write.— Red 
Rose. 



SILENCE not mine entirely, have written, 
which you ignored. Shall not write 
again. If you care, write Box H. 805, The 
Times. E. C. 4.— Cheri. 



DEAREST.— How can I write to you, 
knowing neither your name nor ad- 
dress ? — Cheri. 



Often the communication must be kept secret, not 
only from the public but from the family or associates 
of the person addressed, and in such cases the use of 
real names, initials, or known nicknames is impossible. 
But here advantage may be taken of the curious fact 
that in cases of intimacy and affection secret nicknames 
are likely to come into use. Brothers and sisters, school 



BABY TALK 33 

chums, lovers and married couples, parent and child, any 
two persons who are much together and love one another 
may acquire pet names that are somehow regarded as 
too sacred to be revealed to the outside world. In folk- 
lore such secret names play a prominent part, and in 
certain savage tribes young men who have sworn brother- 
hood adopt private names that they alone know. 

Sometimes two friends gradually develop what is vir- 
tually a code language of their own out of their common 
experiences and constant intercommunication of thought. 
But long association is not necessary to acquire nick- 
names or a set of catchwords that only the two know. 
They may have merely met and exchanged badinage for 
half an hour and yet have felt that sudden sense of 
intimacy and mutual understanding which in extreme 
cases ii called "love at first sight/ ' If then they are 
separated they might easily communicate through the 
public press without having arranged a formal code. 

A large proportion of the private names disclosed in 
these Personals are diminutives or pet names, the sort 
that one would apply to a child. This is based on the 
psychological law that strong emotion is likely to find 
expression in infantile forms of speech. A violent shock 
or emotional crisis may drive one momentarily into in- 
fantile babbling. Lovers are likely to resort to " baby- 
talk' ' in conversation or correspondence. This is not a 
sign of weak-mindedness as the unsympathetic eaves- 
dropper may infer. Dean Swift's love-letters are full 
of baby-talk and he was not weak-minded. A man is 
inclined to take a paternal attitude toward his sweet- 
heart and she finds delight in "mothering" her "big 



34 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



boy." A fascinating lady of my acquaintance, who 
has been much bothered by being made love to by all 
sorts and conditions of men, once explained to me how 
she knew when they were becoming serious: "I don't 
mind what they say until they begin to call me 'little 
woman'; then I put a stop to it." 

A very few samples will suffice, for somehow such 
baby-talk does not sound so charming to the outsider 
as to the participants: 



JANE.— Oi do loike oo. 



T INDA.— Now haughty, then coy, what '■ 
±J a poor fellow to do-o-o? — Jack-in-the- 
Green. 



TyTAUD.— Your big baby asks.— H. 



Mere analysis of the names may give us a clue or set 
our imagination going. But even pet names are not so 
original and exclusive as their inventors suppose: 



MOUSIE— Too bad of you; shall try th« 



More than one dominant male has called his sweet- 
heart "Mousie." 



SPHINX, your riddle is nearinr solution. 
— M. L. K. 



Any woman is a sphinx to the opposite sex. 



ONYX AND YOU 



35 



O 



NYX. — Thanks sweet note. It was like 
a dream and I never felt happier. 



ONYX. — Very many thanks, dear; need 
your lore and confidence more than 
ever. Don't write till I let you know; all 
my love always. 



YOU. — Received all your letters. You fix 
your date and I will do utmost ar- 
range. Let me know soon. Delighted. — 
Dear. 



YOU.- 
ful. 



With you always. Suspense fear- 
Was message Onyx yours? — M. 



YOU.— Delighted. Will meet you, all be- 
ing well, at station. Thanks two let- 
ters. — Dear. 



ONYX. — You are a dear to send such 
sweet notes. I shall never change be- 
cause you are wonderful and make me very 
happy. I wonder if my day will really 
come. — A. M. L. 



Here evidently the wires crossed owing to the fact that 
"onyx" is not a rare stone with either sex and many 
a "dear" has found no name so adequate for the loved 
one as "you." There was once a popular song with 
the refrain: "You ask me why I love you? Because 
you 're you," which is about as near as anybody could 
come to analyzing this intangible attraction. 

Books afford a convenient code of communication. 
Literature holds a mirror up to life, and later lovers 
than Paolo and Francesca have found themselves re- 



36 PLOTS AND PEKSONALITIES 

fleeted in a book. From the following it is evident that 
some folks still read Dickens, Du Maurier, Omar Khay- 
yam, and Miss Alcott, as well as Shelley and Shakspere : 



LITTLE WOMEN.— Meet me Holborn 
Empire any afternoon, 2:15, to see- 
Twins. — Meg and John. 



O 



RLANDO — Yes.— Miranda. 



DICK.— Hail to thee, blythe spirit, bird 



thou never wert! — Chuckie. 



CHORT— Need not be in vain if you do 
° that which is right.— Codlin. 



T ITTLE BILLEE — You tease me, to try 
■" me, but T shall be found watching and 
waiting.— Trilby. 



TRILBY. — A noble resolve; may you have 
strength to carry it out. — Little Billee. 



TRILBY. — Somehow or other, the wheels 
won't go round. — Little Billee. 



SEPTEMBER.— Yes, dear; I think Omar 
~ 37 quite right. — April. __ 



CHESHIRE.— Why will you fly from m© 
and misunderstand my letter? Read 
Omar LXXIII. For I have loved you from 
April to September. 



EIDDLES FROM THE RUBAIYAT 37 



T— DEAR: Read O. 73. It CAN be done! 
• Our "sorry scheme" is but a tangle 
of misunderstandings. I can explain every- 
thing that 's nuzzled you, if you '11 give me 
a real chance. I 'm to blame for much ; 
but truly I 've never meant to let you 
down. I think the beginning of all this 
was the omission of the accent from 
"pass6" and all my consequent stupid mis- 
reading. Forgive, dear, will you? 



But in using the "Rubaiyat" as a code-book it is 
necessary to see that the two have the same edition. The 
stanza referred to is XCIX in my Vedder-Fitzgerald. 
Also when you write in French look out for your ac- 
cents, otherwise you may be endowed with an unwar- 
ranted "past." 

Some of these Personals are decidedly personal and 
reveal the emotions and character of the advertiser with 
great clarity : 



T BT IT BE KNOWN TO THE LADIES 
1 - i (?) with ugly lap-dog in Haymarket, 
11:20 Dec. 1st, that the mere man who, 
through being entangled in Marcus's lead, 
causing the "little dear" pain, got home 
safely, with the aid of some pins, kindly 
given him by some of their better bred 
fellow creatures. 



THE art of "scrounging" apparently still 
exists, but the Cinema Commissionaire 
who took the Army officer's hat in mistake 
for his own at the Junior Turf Club last 
week will save the advertiser a lot of em- 
barrassment if he will write to Box X, 372, 
The Times, E. C. 4. 



VT\ —You may consider it very smart 
•-*--'• to interfere in other people's af- 
fairs, but one of these times somebody's 
big brother will appear on the scene, and 
then look out for squalls. — F. 



38 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



— I know now why I was made to look 
• foolish ; that inane vanity would have 
driven you to do such a despicable thing, 
I should never have believed had I not 
witnessed it myself. They say once bitten 
twice shy, and I shall take my lesson to 
heart. — Good-by. — PL 



Here is a paragraph with punch to it 



TO the smirking, top-hatted rogue who 
departed with my hard-earned win- 
nings at Epsom on Friday. I have a good 
memory for a face and usually get my 
penny back on the punching machine. 



In the following case even a reader with a very drill 
imagination will have no difficulty in getting a mental 
picture of the advertiser : 



WHY not a "FATTY"— (Englishman) ? 
I am over 20 stone. Would any one 
like to film me? If so, write to Box T, 
292, The Times. 



The Personal puzzles are made more confusing and 
therefore more fascinating by the fact that they are 
fragmentary. Sometimes we have only one side of the 
correspondence, which is like overhearing a Personal at 
the telephone. One of the two may be able to write, but 
cannot receive letters. Sometimes an outsider cuts in 
on the correspondence, either by mistake or mischief. 
For instance: 



OLIVER.— Some knave spoke in thy name. 
— Praisp-l-h#»-T,r>rrt. 



The fundamental requisite of a story-teller is the 
habit of speculation about people. The people he 



PLOTS FROM STREET-CARS 39 

on the street-cars — where one sees all sorts of people — 
who are they? What are they thinking about? What 
are they doing ? What would they do under other con- 
ceivable but curious circumstances ? What if the casual 
and incongruous couple sitting side by side on the oppo- 
site seat were thrown together on a desert island, or 
joined together in the bonds of matrimony? A frag- 
ment of a conversation overheard by chance haunts him 
till he thinks up a situation naturally involving it, just 
as an unresolved chord annoys the musical mind. As 
the elevated train speeds by a window he catches a 
stage-setting that makes him wonder what the rest of 
the drama may be. The * 'Times" Personals are like 
such window snapshots, tantalizing glimpses of real life, 
set up in secret code that adds to the fascination. 
There is a hundred-dollar short-story, salable to some 
one of our fiction magazines, in any of these two-line 
advertisements if one has the knack of unraveling its 
mystery : 



■pRIDAY— So it was only a wonderful 
- 1 - dream after all. Good-by, dear. — B. 



What was the dream of Man Friday — or is it Woman 
Friday? 



GYfiT —Foiled again; we will yet make 
•''•the welkin ring with a joyous 
madrigal. — Sumatra. 



How was George Washington — if that is his name — 
foiled, and why should the Sumatran — I wonder what 
his color is — want to make the welkin ring with a 
madrigal ? 



40 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



ARKANSAW — Poor Bear. Don't under- 
stand, but we 're one always — now and 
evermore. — A. L. 



What happened to the Arkansaw Traveler and what 
is it that A. L. does not understand ? 



pLINY. — Your quips and jests may seem 
- 1 - harmless enough to you, but recollect 
there are some to whom they are as a 
poisoned dart. 



"Why should that reputable Latin author be accused 
of malicious jesting? 



[T seems to me 'tis only noble to be good. 
— Laughing Eyes. 



NITA. — Full many a flower is born to 
blush unseen, and waste its sweetness 
on the desert air. — Mooltan. 



Laughing Eyes and Mooltan appear to be familiar 
with Bartlett's " Quotations, ' ' but why do they adver- 
tise the fact? 



IF lady lunching, Midland, Birmingham, 
23rd, afterwards 2:55 P.M., Paddington, 
in Black Musquash, Opossum collar, single 
pearl third finger right hand, mentioned 
names Adkins and Wilson, communicate 
Box V. 608, The Times, will receive some- 
thing her advantage. 



V. 608 must have stared hard at the lunching lady to 
describe her furs so accurately. 



'THJLIP.— Don't get cold feet!— 



Nicholas. 



I should say a tulip was the last thing in the world to 
get cold feet. 



SKELETONS AND SAURIANS 



41 



DOUBLE, S. Kensington, morning- of 6th, 
much regrets his honesty. — Box V. 
958, The Times. 



Apparently Mr. S. S. Kensington has found that 
honesty is not the best policy. 



WOULD any one POSSESSING SKELE- 
TON, and having no use for same, 
kindly LEND it to TWO STUDENTS who 
are unable to buy? 



Every one carries a concealed skeleton, not counting 
what he may have in his closet, but he is not likely to 
lend it to the two poor students so long as he lives. 



>1\TELIA.— Play a little music in the 

i-T-L hand — T>rvnr1 



band. — Dryad. 



"Never heard such musical a discord, Such 
- sweet thunder. — Echo. 



But Echo does not echo his "Midsummer Night's 
Dream" as accurately as an echo should. 



GENUINE OFFER BRONTOSAURUS.— 
Four ex-infantry officers will UNDER- 
TAKE an EXPEDITION in SEARCH of 
the ABOVE REPTILE provided expenses 
are paid by wealthy interested person. — 
W. G., The Times. 



This was published when the papers were discussing 
the possibility of living specimens of prehistoric saurians 
being found in Africa. 



ELSIE.— Simply must resume Wester- 
marck. Not afraid of Marie or any- 
body like her. And Clara has a lily for 
you. — Edith. 



42 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

The story of this Personal may be found in " Those 
About Trench," by Edwin Herbert Lewis. After you 
have worked out your own version, compare it with that 
of the novel. 

At the end of the book will be found other Personals 
for practice. 

e. e. s. 



CHAPTER IV 

TRAINING THE LITERARY IMAGINATION 

Some one once wrote a charming short-story of a 
professional writer whose days and nights were haunted 
by a panicky fear of his running some day out of story 
plots and starving in a garret. He became a miserly 
author and doled out his plots with a sparing hand, 
unaware that the miracle of the loaves and the fishes 
was especially addressed to those who do the work of the 
spirit and that he need only concern himself with gath- * 
ering up the fragments after each editorial dispen- 
sation. 

In literary invention the only way to acquire a capital 
is to put your talent out at interest. One must use the 
little he possesses if he would get more. In the pages 
that follow we purpose to give numerous gymnastic 
exercises for the imagination. My present purpose is to 
give some general advice and to point a few morals, as 
follows : 

Acquire the proper mental sets, even at the cost of / 
much practice. 

Get rid of your inhibitions, even though this require 
a number of visits to a modern mental surgeon or your 
best friend. 

43 



44 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Cultivate your emotions without undue fear of a 
broken heart or of lacerated vanity. 

Develop a self-conscious technie. Find out what 
starts your mind working ; learn where the electric but- f 
ton is located that turns on your mental illumination or 
explodes your sky-rockets. Capitalize your limitations. 

Experiment with social stimulation, not in the old 
fashion of boring any acquaintance by reading him 
your last effusion, but by writing something with him 
and defending with temper your adjective against his 
verb, your heroine against his hero. 

Let us amplify our good advice. 

Acquire the plot-making set of mind. Such a pattern- 
ing of consciousness may be very deliberately developed 
by proper exercise if one starts with a modicum of 
capacity. One may learn to expand the conversation 
overheard on the street-car into a whole novel ; one may 
acquire skill in persuading the story-book girl seen on 
the subway into returning to her home between cloth 
covers by issuing the invitation again and again. One 
may indeed acquire the habit of having inspirations as 
one cultivates a taste for olives by a little initial hero- 
ism. In a number of cases I have had a chance to watch 
the plot-making set develop in students, in spite of the 
Unfavorable conditions attendant upon a routine college 
course and limitations in the way of time. Usually 
Within two years one can begin to notice considerable 
increase in facility and fertility in plot-construction. 
What might be accomplished by further extension of 
time I do not know, since college authorities with their 
well-known wrong-headedness reverse the logical pro- 



GET RID OF SELF DISTRUST 45 

cedure and invite the poor instead of the good student 
to repeat the course ! 

I have considerable faith in sheer exercise developing 
plot-invention but much less confidence in forcing char- 
acter-creation by deliberate effort. The latter is rooted 
so deeply in the instinctive life that its development 
cannot be directed rationally. At most, one can counsel 
a rich experience, the getting into contact with the 
greatest possible varieties of human personality. The 
Game of Personalities is therefore strongly recom- 
mended. The fact that its material is taken from life 
makes pondering the Personals and similar documents a 
real exercise in human motives. 

Inhibit Inhibitions. There is a possibility of the 
scientist carrying on some really valuable investigation 
for the literary man and determining experimentally 
what mental sets have an inhibitory effect one upon the 
other. If the attitude of suspended judgment and 
infinite caution inhibits confidence in one's inspirations 
let us recognize the dangers of scientific training for the 
poet. If psychologizing inhibits dramatizing, let us 
psychologize with discretion. If, on the other hand, inhi- 
bition of any particular mental set be due to ignorance 
of possibilities in the way of manipulating different sets 
of mind, let us discover the proper methods of manipula- 
tion. If necessary we may emulate "William Sharp and 
fuse our critical tendencies into one personality and 
our poetical into a Fiona MacLeod, or at least adopt a 
stimulating pen-name. 

One of the strongest forces inhibiting creative work is 
self -distrust. Few realize that just being one's self is 



46 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

the likeliest way of achieving originality. Most of us 
lack nerve enough to be ourselves. We find it safer to 
live within inverted commas. How very great our 
unused possibilities are we may never realize until the 
brakes are thrown off by some strange accident of the 
spiritual life or by the momentary intoxication of wine 
or hypnotism or love. If we could discover a scientific 
and harmless method by which we could let ourselves go 
at will many of us might change from conventional 
every-day people into charming Patience Worths. If 
the ouija-board be the best method of manipulating 
such transformation, by all means let us adopt it as a 
training instrument for the literary imagination! 

James, apropos of his famous suspicions as to the 
range of human energies, has indicated in his delightful 
fashion the checking of activity by various forms of 
inhibition. 

Social conventions prevent us from telling the truth 
after the fashion of the heroes and heroines of Bernard 
Shaw. Our scientific respectability keeps us from exer- 
cising the mystical portions of our nature freely. 

Women especially suffer from the inhibitions imposed 
by social beliefs. The smile of polite incredulity that 
greets any claim of a woman's understanding mascu- 
line psychology accounts possibly for the failure of 
many women novelists in the creation of convincing 
men characters. They just haven't dared trust their 
own reading of their own dual nature. With men it 
has worked differently. The authorities on feminine 



LIE DOWN TO IT 47 

psychology are all, or nearly all, men; and a great 
many women understand themselves only because they 
have been explained to themselves by their wise 
brothers, and lovers, and physicians. 

James suggests that we map out human possibilities, 
mental and physical, in every direction and then work 
out from biographical material the methods by which 
every type of man may be energized. The suggestion is 
worth following. Many of the minor eccentricities of 
genius appear to be the outcome of accidental discov- 
eries of ways of increasing brain activity. Rousseau 
and Shelley were given to exposing the bared head to the 
hottest of midday suns; and Whitman, says Dexter in 
"Weather Influences," wrote much of his "Leaves of 
Grass/ ' "while prone upon the white sands of a Long 
Island beach, with such a sun as only seems to blaze 
there/' 

The habit of writing in a reclining position is not 
uncommon. Such a position appears to have been fa- 
vored by Milton, Descartes, Leibnitz, Stevenson, Mark 
Twain, and others equally famous. Even the masculine 
propensity for elevating the feet above the head is 
shown to have an excellent reason back of it; the blood 
is kept where it is most needed. 

Many thinkers prefer a leisurely stroll to a Morris- 
chair, even though at times one must dismiss a com- 
panion in order to woo the muse, as Emerson did so 
politely; or drop one's ear-flaps as a gentle hint after 
Spencer's fashion. Walking one's thoughts not asleep 
but awake always calls to my mind Plato's description 
of Protagoras and his train of listeners. 



48 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Nothing delighted me more than the precision of their 
movements ; they never got into his way at all ; but when 
he and those who were with him turned back, then the 
band of listeners divided into two parts on either side: 
he was always in front, and they wheeled round and 
took their places behind him in perfect order. 

Cultivate your emotions. Plato, Shakspere, Everyman 
are alike aware that the lover is kin not to the madman 
only but to the poet as well. He who sings no songs 
when under the influence of the passion of love will 
assuredly sing none at calmer moments. Certain 
geniuses appear to be as dependent upon love as stimu- 
lant to their creative activities as others are dependent 
upon drugs. 

Fear too may stimulate invention, as all of us can 
testify who have fled on a dark, lonely road from a 
fantastical monster that loped toward us from the 
shadows. The imaginative horrors of the future that 
worry can create are vividly realized by those of us who 
in spite of good advice from our neighbors persist in 
crossing bridges before we come to them. What we find 
on the other side does credit to our inventive capacity 
if not to our judgment. 

Anger may force our activities to the blossoming 
point. Rivalry — a mild form of the fighting instinct — is 
credited with much of the creative activity in business 
life. Art production is also an assertion of selfhood, an 
attempt to justify our having a place in the sun. Forced 
from one field of endeavor by native limitations we seek 
an outlet elsewhere. The boy whose physical weakness 
drives him from the foot-ball field may strive for mas- 



SELF-STARTERS 49 

tery in the debate. The girl whose coquetry meets with 
a chilling response may substitute for it a flirtation on 
paper with an imaginary character. All this will be 
handled from another angle in the discussion of com- 
pensatory make-believe. 

The problem at present is how to develop emotional 
conflicts sufficient to furnish a driving force for creative 
work. A well-worn story-plot features the music-master 
who recommends a broken heart as a graduate course for 
the great prima donna. While recognizing the music- 
master's wisdom, I hesitate giving his advice to writers. 
There exists such a horde of the latter that the world 
might be drowned in tears as was Alice's famous 
"Wonderland. Moreover the details the method requires 
escape my imagination. Possibly the critic finds his 
function here. 

Locate your mind's electric button-. Many workers 
find their creative activity stimulated by excitement of 
the various sense-organs. The mind gives its chosen 
form to the material furnished by sensation. The rum- 
bling of a heavy train or the noises of a city street may 
translate themselves into music in the composer's con- 
sciousness; a cab rattling over cobble-stones was one 
composer's chosen stimulus. The humming of an aero- 
plane might well inspire a modern symphonist. Cloudy 
masses in the evening sky have blossomed into cherubs in 
the imagination of many a Raphael. Darwin found 
scientific reflections stimulated by music ; Wagner's sense 
of the dramatic was heightened by the presence of rich 
fabrics and colors. Schiller's inspirations were increased 
by the odor of rotten apples. 



50 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

But it is not only the imagination of poets and artists 
and composers that is stimulated by sense-activity. We 
every-day mortals also have seen roses blossom in the 
glowing coals, golden cities shimmering in sunset skies, 
famous faces staring at us from picture-rocks. One of 
the duties of the motor-bus driver in the National Park 
tours is to exercise the tourist's imagination (and his 
neck) by mile-long admonition to behold crouching 
camels, skied cathedrals, Ford driving his car, Lincoln 
signing the Emancipation Proclamation. 

The question that concerns us here is the possibility 
of handling such exercise systematically and developing 
a technic for scientific training of the imagination. 

For arousal of the visual imagination, I have found 
crystal-gazing valuable. The crystal-ball is widely used 
in occult circles as the medium for materializing sublim- 
inal knowledge, lost memories, and spirit-communica- 
tions. My employment is of course for a much more 
modest purpose, namely, to give substance and illusion- 
ary vividness to visual imagery. 

The ball is placed on a black background and the 
eyes focused steadily upon it. As attention fatigues, the 
ball grows nebulous and misty, and when the mists 
disperse visions appear. These visions arise from the 
deeps of one's own consciousness. They are an expres- 
sion of nothing supernatural except in so far as they 
reveal to us unknown possibilities in our nature. With 
the fatiguing of attention we are self -hypnotized and no 
longer hypercritical (which means death to our inspira- 
tions). An extended range is given to consciousness 
and images become hallucinatory. 



CRYSTAL GAZING 51 

Personally I find the crystal an excellent device for 
obtaining landscape settings for imaginative work or 
for rendering visual memories more vivid. To cite an 
example from my experience: Desiring a fantastic 
image for a poem I gaze into the crystal and see there a 
great avenue with double rows of gigantic tapers stretch- 
ing through the night of an amazing jungle. The can- 
dles of civilization piercing dimly a strange and savage 
wilderness give me just the figure I desire. 

Shell-hearing emancipates some imaginations. It is 
similar in principle to crystal-gazing. The far-off mur- 
mur of the ocean becomes a stimulus for the auditory 
imagination which then gives it form as words or music. 
The following experiment, inadequately carried out, I 
report as suggesting a possible procedure : I chose as a 
subject a girl of great originality and strong auditory 
preoccupation to determine if possible whether she could 
be led to give poetic expression to her poetic ideas. 
Placing her in a comfortable position and instructing 
her to relax, I gave her a shell to hold at her ear and 
then read to her in a low voice poetry with an accentu- 
ated Swinburnian swing to it. My expectations were 
confirmed. After a while the vague murmur began to 
beat rhythmically in time with the poetry and occasion- 
ally the murmur shaped itself into words and phrases. 
When I ceased reading, the subject began to give in 
rhythmic form her reverie-ideas. 

The imagination may smell out inspiration. That 
odors are particularly potent in revival of emotional 
memories is a commonplace of popular psychology al- 
though experiment in the laboratory has failed to dis- 



52 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

close any peculiar associative liveliness for odors. In 
literature, in any case, the use of odors as a means of 
summoning memories from the vasty deep has been used 
most effectively. The Sick-abed Lady recovers knowl- 
edge of her former life from a whiff of mingled ether 
and tobacco. A faint mignonette fragrance is the phan- 
tom presence in "The Witching Hour.' , The smell of 
blood haunts Lady Macbeth; and a loathsome odor al- 
most prohibits my reading of Kipling 's ' ' Strange Ride 
of Morrowbie Jukes." Zola is the great odorist of 
literature. He is said to characterize every personage 
by his smell. One is "like a great nosegay of strong 
scent"; another has a "good fresh perfume of autumn 
fruit." 

But do odors convey any definite suggestions of per- 
sonality or plot to the average person? 

I tried the following experiment : Two series of odors 
were selected with some care. The first series contained 
four odors chosen in the hope of effecting a humorous 
combination of smells. The second group was composed 
of three odors and thought by the experimenter to be 
a sentimental combination. The odors were numbered 
and presented to the subjects, one series at a time, in 
bottles uniform in size and shape. 

The instructions were as follows for each series: 
"Uncork each bottle in the order indicated by the num- 
bers. Inhale the odor passively. Allow it to suggest a 
personality. After getting a character suggestion from 
each odor, weave the personalities into a plot. ' ' 

Series I contained four odors as follows: (1) nitro- 
benzol; (2) mutton-tallow; (3) cloves; (4) asafetida. 



A MUTTON-TALLOW MAN 53 

Dentistry, cosmetics, shoe-polish, candle and candy- 
making, and baking are associations called out by these 
odors ; hence by easy transition we get dentists, painted 
ladies, boot-blacks, and cooks in our odorous stories. 

Heavy and light odors, sickening and cooling ones 
suggest easy analogies with characters. A more subtle 
utilization of odors comes in the arousal of vague emo- 
tional suggestion. Mutton-Tallow is a hypochondriacal 
old man, rolled in cotton and clothes to protect himself 
from the weather, continually warming himself by the 
fire; or the owner of a candle-factory, wealthy but 
grouchy and heavy-set; or fat and wheezy. One can 
scarcely imagine Mutton-Tallow in a tight-fitting Nor- 
folk jacket ; he is bound to be formless because of excess 
of clothes or excess of flesh. Cloves appeals more to 
one's sense of comfort than to the eye. He is a busy 
producer of Life-Savers, careless of appearances, or a 
painless dentist. 

Interesting complications arise in bringing these com- 
monplace folk into a story-plot. One embryo writer 
does it as follows : No. 1 is a boot-black, with patched 
overalls, and dirty face ; No. 2 a wealthy, grouchy candle- 
manufacturer, fond of showing his authority; No. 3 an 
old-fashioned dentist ; No. 4 a stout woman, working in 
a pickle-factory, reduced, gingham-'clad. No. 1 is 
son of No. 4, run down* by No. 2 in his car near the 
office of No. 3, into which he is carried. No. 4 appearing 
on the scene of action threatens No. 2 with court action ; 
No. 2 reacts brutally and is skilfully anesthetized by 
No. 3, who sends for an officer and presents him with an 
enormous bundle. I pass over the plot-untangling. 



54 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Series II was composed of the following odors: (1) 
faint heliotrope, (2) thyme, (3) bergamot. I considered 
it a sentimental series of odors and it actually did 
suggest to scentees the eternal triangular situation and 
somewhat similar developments. I had not erred in 
thinking Heliotrope and Bergamot were women. Helio- 
trope — delicately feminine, very fair, overly sweet, given 
to wearing flowered organdies and filigreed silver. Ber- 
gamot — a brunette, over-truthful and frank, who with 
cool candor confesses to No. 2 a past, delicately gray. 
Thyme — a very, very good man, hyperfastidious, affi- 
anced to No. 3 until her confession of school-girl flirta- 
tions and expurgated escapades estranges him and 
throws him into the arms of Heliotrope. 

The interesting outcome of the experiment with odors 
was the frequency with which Series I suggested humor- 
ous complications. Humorous stories are the rarest of 
varieties. Hence the suggestion is made that teachers 
of short-story writing try what they can do to stimulate 
humor by the use of odors. It would be perfectly pos- 
sible for directors of correspondence courses to send out 
as lesson-assignments scented powders wrapped in the 
immemorial powder fashion but to be taken mentally, 
instead of internally. Editors too might try the plan on 
their contributors. Who knows how much stimulation 
might be added to the already exciting check by having 
it scented? And rejection-slips, if properly perfumed, 
might suggest whole novels. 

Music hath charms that stir as well as soothe. That 
music frequently arouses the visual imagination is 
proved by many reports in scientific journals on its 



MUSICAL MOODS 55 

potency in evoking lovely landscapes, dancing fairies, 
marching platoons. Moods may be summoned at will. 
Schumann said of one of Schubert's marches that it 
"brought visions of ancient Seville, with ladies and 
dons in high heels, with jeweled daggers, stepping in 
stiff, stately wise through the sunlit Spanish streets." 
Titles sometimes assist the halting musical imagination. 
But beware of mixing them. A young lady whose Vie- 
trola record carried, on one side "In a Clock Shop" and 
on the other "A Hunting Scene," frequently heard 
galloping steeds when she should have heard galloping 
clocks. 

But is music able to evoke stories and characterize 
personalities? Some auditors get linked episodes from 
music but the complications are simple ones, events 
being subordinated to mood and atmosphere. A few 
composers have written novels in measures or tried by 
motifs to suggest personalities. But, on the whole, 
music is only vaguely suggestive of individualized per- 
sonalities. It does not give you a bowing acquaintance 
with its dramatis personae. 

My students in fact usually stare at me blankly when 
I give them a musical phrase and ask for a personality 
in exchange. But for me the personality-suggestion in 
a musical phrase is very potent. Hum to yourself or 
play on the piano the following bars : 



You understand, I am sure, why the measures make me 
think of a garrulous lady who after a prolonged mono- 



56 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

logue wonders why she is hoarse and on the verge of 
losing her voice. 

The indirect inspirational value of music in arousing 
creative activity is very great. Laboratory studies on 
stimulation of mental activity by music are in progress* 
encouraged by Mr. Edison, who is much interested in the 
psychology of music. 

Experiment with social stimulations. Stimulating the 
imagination by cooperative work is certainly worth try- 
ing. Many great art-products, notably cathedrals and 
dramas, are the outcome of composite creation. The 
Beaumont-Fletcher and Erckmann-Chatrian partner- 
ships are best known. 

But the teacher who wishes to develop a composite 
play or story should carefully think out the technic or 
procedure, otherwise the construction will fall like a 
house of cards at the first rude touch. The following 
points should be considered : How large may the group 
be that is to collaborate ? How should it be constituted ? 
What should be the plan of procedure? 

My own experience suggests limiting the number of 
collaborators to six or eight. Usually a few of the group 
will prove useful merely in fertilizing the inventive 
processes of one mind by those of another through the 
multiplication of associations and the general emotional 
stimulation due to social contact. The group will 
gradually decrease in size as work proceeds. 

In choosing the group in the first place one's subtlest 
knowledge of personalities must be employed. One is 
trying out a delicate sort of alchemy, getting individuals 
to work together. There are occasional individuals who 
cannot fuse their thoughts with those of others. Not that 



COOPERATIVE COMPOSITION 57 

they are too original; only too individualistic. Their 
ideas may be too fantastic, too grotesque for others to 
follow. They should never be given a main part to 
write but may contribute an original bit here and 
there. 

Antagonistic personalities need not be shut out of this 
group. Often sparks fly when such personalities clash. 
One of the best composite stories I ever succeeded in 
getting written came from the conflict between a young 
man and woman who hated each other cordially. The 
plot developed tartly. 

The directing force throughout must be furnished by 
the leader, one with sufficient authority to keep the 
activity going and to direct it into other channels when 
it blocks in a given direction or flies off at too great a 
tangent. The leader should be able to fuse personalities 
and paragraphs, editing both as necessary. 

My procedure in composite play-writing is to get a 
group together and encourage the members of it simply 
to think aloud, give utterance to any plot-idea, however 
absurd it seems on the face of it, however foreign to any 
other. The first step is to get ideas flying abou«t in the 
fashion of social conversations. Social stimulation really 
avails in release of ideas. 

As leader in a group I entertain cordially each idea 
as it appears, attempting throughout to see how many 
of them may combine in a plot; how many of them 
merge naturally into a unit-scheme; which of them 
suggest distinctive characters; which of them suggest 
dramatic scenes. If the group is well known from the 
psychological side it is possible to solicit material from 
particular individuals in it. From one's visualist one 



58 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

asks for suggestions as to setting, from one's humorist 
for humorous complications, and so on. 

After the first session the leader reduces the sugges- 
tions made to some sort of system; a plot is organized 
and read to the group for criticism, further suggestions, 
elaboration of characters, and the like. At this point 
members of the group begin to develop affection for 
different episodes or different characters that are in 
process of making and such preferences are noted. At 
this stage also some of the group drop out and only 
those whose interest is waxing go on with the work. 

The parceling out of the plot for development may be 
the next step or, possibly preceding it, the writing of 
character-sketches in order to fixate and render distinct 
the character-parts. Distinctive gifts and individual 
prepossessions must be considered in assigning plot- 
development — descriptive bits to one, dramatic scenes to 
another, transitional portions to a third, climaxes to a 
fourth. 

This mass of material goes finally to the leader for 
editing. Much of this work consists in blending mate- 
rial, erasing inconsistencies, adding necessary episodes, 
easing the shift from one style to another without losing 
the variety that gives charm to composite work, and in 
polishing paragraphs and ideas. 

The possibility of playing upon the creative activities 
of clever people and producing harmonious results is 
exceedingly fascinating. Very likely such social collab- 
oration accounts for many triumphs in the history of 
drama-writing which to-day we attribute to the solitary 
genius. j. e. d. 



CHAPTER V 

NAMES AND CLOTHES AS LITERARY ACCESSORIES 

If the fair Juliet had put her famous question 
"What 's in a name?" to the writers of " Times" Per- 
sonals she would have learned, as shown in a preceding 
chapter, that sometimes there is much — too much — in a 
name, and sometimes too little. Sometimes it gives you 
away when you don't want it to and sometimes it 
doesn't when you do. 

Even the modern psychologist could have pointed out 
the fallacy in Juliet's love-logic. He would have told 
her that neither Shakspere nor fate intended to conceal 
her lover when naming him. The wherefore of being 
Borneo is to be Borneo! 

A name is a focus of associations, hinting all manner 
of subtle relationships such as nationality, social level, 
professional affiliations, emotional symbolism, parents' 
hopes and ambitions and secret dreams. Consider the 
fine story of the Italian mother whose three sons were 
named Raphael, Angelo, and Leonardo. How inevitably 
that family nourished a famous sculptor! Or Robert 
Frost's poem "Maple" of a girl's and woman's hidden 
life centered around the parental secret symbolized by 
that most quaint of given names. 

A name is like a spot-light turned successively upon 



60 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

each dramatic star in life's cast. In the hands of a 
skilful manipulator of stage effects it can work marvels. 
The individual who intends to achieve greatness should 
demand from his ancestors a name that sticks to the 
memory like a cockle-burr to a rough serge. For group- 
memory is as treacherous as is the memory of the indi- 
vidual and lets names slip from it after a casual intro- 
duction quite as unceremoniously. Therefore advertising 
devices must be applied to names of celebrities, just as 
they are to brands of breakfast-food or of preserved 
fruits. Those who hope to be much in the public eye 
must also consider the public's ear and seek the eupho- 
nious, the dignified, the rememberable name. 

It 's rather a pity that the advantage is given here to 
emancipated slaves, clever criminals, and quick-witted 
actresses who name themselves and that politicians and 
candidates for the Presidency may be penalized by their 
grandfathers. Yet Chance herself sometimes takes a 
hand in the game and gives a great candidate a name of 
traditional splendor or one with a twist to it that hooks 
the community memory. 

Industrial psychology has recently become interested 
in this matter of intriguing the public memory by choice 
of a name, say for a firm. Dr. Roback asks, for example, 
"If Smith and Stanft were to start business together, 
would it be more advantageous to have the names stand 
as they were just mentioned, or would it be more ad- 
visable to reverse the order and call the firm Stanft & 
Smith?" Feminists are asking similar questions about 
the naming of matrimonial firms. 

Experiment shows that with repetition the unfamiliar 



CHARACTER COGNOMENS 61 

name becomes a more effective stimulus than a familiar 
one is; but that a familiar name may be used to keep 
the unfamiliar one in focus until repetition has had a 
chance to stamp in the latter. The investigator con- 
cluded "that a combination of names possesses a 
greater immediate memory-value if the more familiar 
component of the combination appears last, and the less 
familiar first." Stanft & Smith then is preferred by 
science to Smith & Stanft. 

From this long introduction it may be gathered that 
naming the children of one's fantasy is both an absorb- 
ing and an important matter. Not always, however, 
need writers go so far afield as Dickens with his 
Chuzzlewit, his Smangle, his Snevellici. 

Some interesting experiments have been carried out in 
the laboratory concerning this matter of naming charac- 
ters in fiction, but before reporting them let us call 
attention to some curious leads in the history of litera- 
ture, such for example as the Victorian use of skeleton- 
ized words in place of names, quite like an up-to-date 
mental test of the poor reader! In such novels Lady 
Gw-n-ver flirts with Lord La-ce-t or the Countess 
W — k condescends to the Tr-oad\-r. Royalty itself may 
be introduced into fiction in this discreet way with no 
danger of lese-majesty, and through the tattered dis- 
guise one may inspect the gold mantle and the purple 
hose. Our treatment of modern rulers is somewhat less 
gentle. Instead of skeletonizing them we pad them 
alphabetically with malice aforethought; we have our 
Vanderghouls and our Asiorbilts. 

Simple-hearted novelists have frequently indulged in 



62 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

broad hints to their readers in naming a character. 
They have no desire to deceive us about Mr. Stout or 
Mr. Glum. 

Trollope, particularly, was a model of truthfulness. 
Meet Dr. Proudie and his magnificent lady, just recently 
become Bishop of Barchester. Of course Dr. Proudie 
was not the man to allow anything omitted that might 
be becoming to his new dignity; and of course Mrs. 
Proudie was "habitually authoritative." No need for 
Trollope to tell us — though he insists upon it — that 
Mrs. Quiverful has "fourteen unprovided babies' 7 ! We 
might have guessed so much though not perhaps so 
many. Particularly happy was Trollope 's christening 
of the great London doctors Sir Lambda Mewmew and 
Sir Omicron Pie. Something cryptic and intriguing be- 
longs by right to the letters of the Greek alphabet. So 
much every college student learns in college, and that 
too without taking the old-fashioned classical course. 
Only nowadays Lambda Mewmew suggests a different 
diagnostic method and Omicron Pie a more deadly form 
of surgery. 

The humorist, by intention or otherwise, has of course 
hit upon the device of misapplying names, using left- 
handed hints, as it were. The big lady is named Tiny; 
the little piccaninny christened George Washington 
Napoleon; the lively Spaniard miscalled MacPherson, 
Explanations are then in order and so one makes easy 
descent to the story. 

The "Times" Personals throw considerable light on 
the motives that operate in the unsophisticated when 
giving or assuming a name ; they are worth careful study 



NIBBLENUTS AND TWINKLETOES 63 

from this point of view. Sometimes the time or the 
place is the very simple clue to identification. Thus a 
correspondent is addressed as Eiffel Tower or as June 
Roses, as Omaha or November. Or an article of apparel 
is stressed. Blue Collar may write to "White Gloves, or 
The Dark Lady in the Persian Lamb Coat be addressed. 

Correlative names may suggest personal relationships. 
Bigdog sends a message to Kitten ; May Fly a token to 
Squirrel ; B Major conveys a hint to B Minor ; or Ban- 
delero remonstrates with Signora. 

Delightful character-glimpses may be had through the 
key-hole of names as for example : 



NIBBLENUTS.— Greetings. Why no let- 
ter ? — Twinklptnps. 



I know just what Nibblenuts and Twinkletoes look 
like and how they would act. Ditto for the addressee of 
the following: 



MOST BEAUTIFUL BOBBIEDAZZLER. 
— May you one day learn to think of 
him, who ever thinks of you, as other than 
—The Bore. 



But I suspect that The Bore is able to assume a charac- 
ter as well as a name. The amount of strain he is willing 
to put on one comma is tantalizing. 



WILL-O'-THE-WISP.— 'Tis a merry hunt 
but worth every minute of the time 
spent. You have now two moves only. 
What an extraordinary escape. My reward 
is in sight. — Hunter. 



Of Will-0 '-The-Wisp I know everything except the sex. 



64 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



"DLUE MOON. — Suggest your remarks 
±J misunderstood ; might be inclined to 
discuss if way was opened up. — Dutch 
Oven. 



One gets character contrast here, the unimaginative 
and somewhat slow Dutch Oven failing to catch the 
drift of Blue Moon's cryptic remarks until some hours 
after the conversation was over. One meets men like 
that! 

Character revelations are apparent in the following: 



GWENNY. — Because I never rave nor 
rant are you so shallow as to dream 
that I feel nothing? — Laughing Cavalier. 



•INCE-NEZ. — Sorry I could not convey a 
fuller apology. — Galerie Bleu. 



pHOC— How's that? Be more explicit; 
y - > it is unbearable without you. Can 
you telephone? Memory of June always 
remains. — Boy Blue. 



QISEAU— 'Sawful.— Boy Blue. 



Surely the Laughing Cavalier, Boy Blue, and Pince- 
Nez need no further introduction, but I should require a 
letter of recommendation from the correspondents below : 



GREEN MAJOLICA. 
nish Clay. 



-Not as yet. — Cor- 



The laboratory investigation on the psychology of 
names previously referred to concerned two questions : 



CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF? 65 

(1) Can the physiognomy or mere look of a name 
create a mental picture of a person? 

(2) Is it more likely to suggest a type of character 
rather than a visualization of an individual ? 

One of the most interesting chapters on seeing with 
the mind's eye is that which relates to the visualization 
of persons. Some seers possess most lifelike acquaint- 
ances. In realistic fashion they imagine their relatives, 
their friends, even themselves ! Others are born cartoon- 
ists, emphasizing or even exaggerating a particular 
feature. Sometimes a nose appears the only distinct 
landmark in their picturing of a bit of facial geography, 
or nothing may be present in their thought of another 
but a pair of curved eyebrows over very wide-open 
lidless eyes! 

But most curious of all are the images we form of 
persons whom we have never seen but whose acquaint- 
ance we have been led to anticipate or desire. Most of 
us have been startled when brought face to face with the 
reality. What a shock when the tall black-haired severe 
sehoolma'am of our anticipation is found to be small, 
blond, smiling shyly. Particularly do we visualize 
story-book characters so vividly that often our mental 
illustrations clash abruptly with those of the illustrator. 
Better to leave the portraiture wholly in the hands of 
the novelist who can accomplish strange marvels by 
subtle indirection. 

To return, however, to the laboratory. Does the 
novelist's magic go so far that he can suggest by a 
proper name not only a certain pattern of temperament 
but the very looks of a character? Were Dickens's 



66 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

proper names coined, as has been suggested, with such 
intention? Were his curious word-physiognomies in- 
vented to mirror facial curves and angles or only angles 
of temper? 

Says Professor Claparede, discussing the representa- 
tion of unknown persons (quoted by English in the 
"American Journal of Psychology") : 

The physiognomy of the proper name certainly plays 
a part. The sound of the name has an affective tone 
which cooperates in the elaboration of its mental repre- 
sentation. Other things equal, names consisting of 
heavy or repeated syllables call forth images of fat, 
heavy-set, bloated, or slightly ridiculous individuals; a 
short and sonorous name, on the other hand, suggests 
slender and active persons, etc. Monsieur Patapoufard 
would evidently be of a type quite different from that 
of Monsieur Flic. ... It is not without intention that 
Daudet has created the name Tartarin, Dickens that of 
Pickwick, Flaubert those of Barnard and of Pecuchet. 

Claparede believed that the names cited would pro- 
duce "a similar effect upon all readers," but experi- 
ments carried out in the psychological laboratory at 
Cornell University indicated great diversity in the sug- 
gestive power of a particular name for different readers. 

One investigator writes: 

We conclude that the psychological response to un- 
known proper names is extremely variable. It depends 
not only upon imaginal type but also upon associative 
and attitudinal factors which differ widely in individual 
observers. 



GRIB AND GOLLIWOG 67 

Highly responsive persons give, however, most inter- 
esting accounts of their reactions to proper names. Let 
me illustrate by the following report of how one psychol- 
ogist was affected by the name Grib : 

Had a feeling for him as quickly as I heard the word ; 
felt Grib myself, i. e., obstinate, persistent, muscular, 
common-sense ; as if I would fight for anything I thought 
mine; would be surprised if any one should rebel 
against my authority. 

Pictorial representations in response to proper names 
are, it appears, less common than notions of a type as 
illustrated above. But I find them common occurrences 
in my experience. 

The bare look of certain names in the Personals give 
me a photograph of certain individuals. 



T3UZFUZ. — Him no biff medicine man. — 



Woggles. 



Buzfuz I see plainly. He is young, large, gray-eyed, 
with tousled mouse-colored hair and clothes askew. This 
picture comes from the strategic position of the z's. 

The message to Buzfuz gives me a notion of his per- 
sonality. He is brilliant but lacking in self-confidence, 
and not long out of medical college. And now I notice 
his beautiful hands, those of the born surgeon. I under- 
stand why Woggles — cheerful sinner — is trying to buck 
him up by commenting on an already successful class- 
mate. 



LOLLIWOG— Breakers ahead.— Sundial. 



68 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

The physiognomy of Golliwog is suggested by the look 
of the word, or if you are more sensitive to sounds than 
to sights, by the sound of it. Golliwog is — or ought to 
be — a regular grasshopper of a man, with sprawling 
movement and loose- jointed mind. He is always finding 
breakers ahead, stumbling over chairs and hairpins. 



SKEETER.— Too early for you: You ap- 
pear later. — Spiro. 



Always, too early for Skeeter, sharp-nosed, narrow- 
eyed blade of a man, whose stature is properly stated in 
inches ! 



TERRY.— The brilliancy of your notion 
leads me to think that you are of a 
xylophagous species. — Vi. 



You '11 get a perfectly definite picture of the xylopha- 
gous Terry, if you 11 look him up in the dictionary, as I 
did. Try it ! He 's there. 

In any case it behooves the novelist to take consider- 
able thought of the reader in naming his characters. 
Perhaps, of laboratory reports, that of Dr. Roback helps 
him most. He must somehow intrigue the public 's mem- 
ory by his choice of a name, and this he does by com- 
bining in one name something strange and arresting, 
something home-keeping and familiar. 

A name constitutes a garment of the spirit; other, 
more material, garments must also be provided. Dress- 
making on the fictional level has in fact much to com- 
mend itself to the individual luxurious in taste but 
straitened in purse or unskilful with needle. It is sur- 



COSTUMING THE CHARACTERS 69 

prising that it is not more indulged in by frugal fabri- 
cators. 

Lady novelists occasionally succumb to temptation 
and present their heroines with wardrobe trunks filled 
to overflowing with delicious confections : lingerie froth- 
ing with filmy lace, mandarin coats rich in Oriental em- 
broideries, boudoir-gowns slashed and sashed with art- 
less art. Reading their pages is quite as stimulating as 
poring over a fashion- journal. 

Men novelists are more sketchy in description; their 
hints are less practical. They delight in silver chiffons 
and iridescent roses ; in irresistible slippers and delight- 
ful bonnets. Obviously their attention is too often 
diverted from the bonnet to the escaping curl ; from the 
pretty slipper to the prettier ankle. Conrad, after de- 
signing an intriguing gown of pale blue embroidered 
silk for his alluring lady of "The Arrow of Gold," adds 
"Within the extraordinary wide sleeve, lined with black 
silk, I could see the arm, very white with a pearly gleam 
in the shadow. ' ' 

Dressing a character properly may be an achievement 
of the historic, the racial, the religious imagination, as 
witness Hergesheimer's carefully wrought descriptions 
of Taou Yuen's elaborate toilettes, in "Java Head." For 
example : 

A long gown with wide sleeves of blue-black satin, 
embroidered in peach-colored flower petals and innu- 
merable minute sapphire and orange butterflies, a short 
sleeveless jacket of sage green caught with looped red 
jade buttons and threaded with silver and indigo high- 
soled slippers crusted and tasseled with pearls. Her 



70 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

hair rose from the back in a smooth burnished loop. 
There were long pins of pink jade carved into blossoms, 
a quivering decoration of paper-thin gold leaves with 
moonstones in glistening drops, and a band of coral lotus 
buds. Pierced stone bracelets hung about her delicate 
wrists, fretted crystal balls swung from the lobes of her 
ears; and clasped on the ends of several fingers were 
long pointed filigrees of ivory. 



Usually it suffices to suggest sketchily the fashions of 
the day, for all readers follow fashion. But one may 
ask, not inappropriately, what fashion follows. The 
psychology of clothes — not to mention clothes philos- 
ophy, for which one must still go to Carlyle's " Sartor 
Resartus" — draws largely upon two branches of the 
science, namely, social psychology and the psychology 
of art. 

Social psychology makes much of prestige, that curi- 
ous psychic aura that envelops some personalities so 
notably and is just as notably absent from others. Pres- 
tige is conferred by great size, great wealth, social 
position; by worldly success, acknowledged character 
and reputation. In the absence of knowledge it is pretty 
largely determined by personal appearance, and per- 
sonal appearance is to a great degree a matter of clothes 
and of avoirdupois, so that fashion — unconsciously 
shrewd — rings changes upon a few notes only and seeks 
to create personal prestige by creating illusions of size, 
wealth, success, age, authority. 

Turn the leaves of the fashion-books of the centuries. 
How many are the devices for increasing height and 
apparent weight ! Note the high hats of the Normandy 



THE PRESTIGE OF ATTIRE 71 

Belle and of Richard Harding Davis's favorite Van 
Bibber. Note the ample Roman toga, the Elizabethan 
ruff, the colonial peruke, the Victorian hoop-skirt and 
leg-o '-mutton sleeve, the Parisian hat of a thousand 
cherries. One can easily by taking thought and a few 
dollars add several inches to one 's stature. 

Prestige may be created also by symptoms of wealth. 
Here a diamond on the hand is worth several birds on 
the head, although even a decapitated peacock in the 
aforementioned situation is always a scream. Wealth 
creates leisure and such leisure is attested by wearing 
perishable and impractical clothes. High-heeled slip- 
pers and shoe-horn skirts are devised for stationary 
advertising. 

The prestige which depends upon authority and suc- 
cess may also be suggested by clothes. Bishop and hobo 
must dress the part. Military tactics depend greatly 
upon the uniform and upon official insignia; chevrons 
and epaulettes, oak-leaves and stars have inspired many 
a man in the rank and file. It has been suggested by 
Walter A. Dyer writing in "The Bookman" that authors 
too should wear distinguishing insignia — "two crossed 
quills, as being less complicated than a typewriter . . . 
one stripe on the sleeve might serve to indicate that the 
author had written a book that had sold 10,000 copies, 
two stripes 20,000, and so on, with gold braid for the six 
best sellers." 

In some epochs and localities age brings prestige, 
hence the powdered hair; when youth is the more 
prestigious, the powder is applied differently. 

We are willing enough to make capital out of prestige, 



72 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

but it 's the last thing we sell over the counter, hence 
the pathos in some of the Personals. One does not like 
to think of Cinderella in Sackville Street poverty- 
stricken and advertising: 



ANEW ECONOMY.— EVENING SHOES 
RECOVERED in Satins and Brocades, 
by Cinderella. 



And here 's another that brings a mist to the eyes ; 



MAGNIFICENT SILK BROCADE 
FRINGED SHAWL given by Queen 
Victoria to owner's mother. Make lovely 
Court dress. lOOgns. 



There is, however, an art of clothes as well as a 
sociology. Old-time fashion books yield, occasionally, 
styles whose beauty is attested by their continued appeal 
to the eye. Lines simple and gracious as those of nature ; 
fabrics woven of summer clouds and dyed autumnally. 

Writers on esthetics have much to say of empathy, 
which is interpreted to mean our identification with 
objects and personalities in our environment because of 
subtle mimicry of their movements and postures. We 
are one with the ocean, the wind, the prairies, because 
we have ebbed and flowed with the tides, swept through 
undulating trees, followed long shadows to the far 
horizon. 

So too fabrics and fashions are delightful in so far as 
they make us one with delightful things, create illusions 
of freedom and ethereal lightness. Floating draperies 
charm us because we float in the breeze with them ; rich 
velvets because they anchor us right royally. 

The sociology and esthetics of clothes are obviously 



EMPATHY AND ESTHETICS 73 

written from very different slants. It is difficult to 
reconcile art with -artifice, beauty with display. But the 
novelist has a better chance of doing this than the 
modiste has. He may trust much to the reader's imagi- 
nation, which will easily conjure up the most fashionable 
cut of wings for his angels, and of halos for his saints, 
and think them beautiful because a la mode. 

J. B. D. 



CHAPTER VI 

TRICKS OF THE LITERARY IMAGINATION 

The study by scientists of dream-personalities and the 
characters of folk mythologies has thrown much light 
upon certain devices of literary craftsmen, adopted by 
them quite innocently, with no sense of kinship to those 
shrewd imps of the subconscious life who manufacture 
dreams and religions. 

In dream fabrication two methods of character-making 
are especially noticeable ; namely, creating characters by 
fusion of real personalities known in the waking state, 
and creating them by splitting personalities into diverse 
traits which are then personified. 

In creation by fusion very unlike individualities may 
be amalgamated usually by virtue of some common pos- 
session, say red hair or a crooked smile. Fusion on the 
basis of a superficial resemblance may give us a most 
complex and incalculable character. Or in the fusion 
differences may be blurred and only common traits 
stand out, as in Dickens's Micawber, an amalgam of the 
novelist's father and Leigh Hunt. 

Composite photography of this sort is a favorite pas- 
time of the literary camera-man. It has given us the 
type-characters of the stage, the black-browed villain, 
the unsophisticated ingenue, the ladylike parson. Such 

74 



DUPLEX PERSONALITIES 75 

characters are unfortunately at home only in conven- 
tional settings. They are too frail to stand a change in 
altitude. 

The splitting of a personality into two or more is as 
common in dreams and literature as it is infrequent in 
life. Sometimes it is done to emphasize a particular 
trait, sometimes to point a contrast. 

In mythology, ' l doubling ' ' of the principal characters 
is a common device. Says Dr. Ernest Jones in writing 
of this in the "American Journal of Psychology": 

The chief motive for its occurrence seems to be the 
desire to exalt the importance of these characters, and 
especially to glorify the hero by decoratively filling in 
the stage with lay figures of colorless copies whose 
neutral movements contrast with the vivid activities of 
the principals. 

Various constituent traits of the hero may be em- 
bodied in subordinate characters. Or the tyrannical 
father of the family romance splits into father and 
tyrant. Sometimes the split-off tyrant becomes the 
hero's grandfather as in the Greek legend of Perseus, 
or the hero's uncle, as in the Hamlet legend. 

A classic way of effecting a doubling is to imitate 
nature and to bring twins on the scene of action. The 
myth of the founding of Thebes gains in solemnity and 
dignity by the introduction of the twin founders, Am- 
phion and Zethos. So also the myth of the founding of 
Rome by Romulus and Remus. 

In literature "splitting" and "doubling" of person- 
alities are manipulated in a great variety of ways. 



76 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Shadow personalities may follow the main characters 
so as to underscore or emphasize a given trait. Echo 
personalities are used to give repetition to the wise and 
witty sayings of the philosopher-hero. The personal 
servant was at one time an excellent mirror for master 
or mistress. One side of Portia and one of Bassanio is 
head-lined by the introduction of Nerissa and Gratiano, 
colored shadows of more complex personalities. 

The twin-motif has of course been used extensively to 
complicate the plot, to enlarge the hero's sphere of 
action, to play in comic fashion upon illusions of recog- 
nition. "The Comedy of Errors" gives both the twin- 
motif and the shadow-motif. Antipholus of Ephesus 
and Antipholus of Syracuse, shadowed each by his 
Dromio, are irresistibly laughable. Just why, one won- 
ders, is so deep a chord in one's nature stirred by bare 
repetition? Mrs. Micawber knew the appeal: "He is 
the parent of my children! He is the father of my 
twins! — I will ne-ver desert Mr. Micawber." 

Shakspere's delightful boy and girl twins, Sebastian 
and Viola of "Twelfth Night," would, alas, fail to pass 
the biological censor, who tells us twins are not always 
twins, and never are when of the opposite sex, and so 
therefore are not likely to be identical in appearance. 
But if repeating boy and girl twins must be ruled out 
of literature, not so reparteeing twins, which leaves us 
intact Shaw's irrepressible Dolly and Phil of "You 
Never Can Tell." 

"The Heavenly Twins," who created a furore in 
fiction in the last century, are not wholly forgotten, as 
witness the Personal: 



USEFUL TWINS 77 



HOPE "Nunky" Rernus will come with a 
thunderstorm and not a few drops 
just to lay the dust. — The Heavenly Twins. 



In the popular mystery story the twin is a safety- 
•device for protecting the lovely and innocent lady who 
is able thus to keep the center of the stage all the time, 
reap the rewards of both virtue and lack of it, and 
marry the irreproachable hero in the final chapter. 

Twins are usually employed with comic motive and 
yet no tragedy in history holds grimmer possibilities 
than the Man in the Iron Mask, twin of the Grand Mon- 
arch, dead while yet alive. Something too of horror 
and unreality clings to Maeterlinck's use of repetition 
in the " Seven Princesses." It is as though one saw 
life in a bad mirror that distorts faces and figures, 
blurring and doubling them in nightmarish fashion. 

Often, of course, characters are mere plot-accessories. 
One by one the character traits are introduced that are 
needed to develop the story; then self-conscious logic 
does the rest and attempts to make them self -consistent 
— as though a real personality ever bothered about 
consistency ! 

More destructive still of individuality — both in books 
and out of them — are the social conventions of the day 
in which one lives and writes. A novelist's characters 
must conform to the social ideals of his period. A 
fragile fainting heroine, all feeling, no thought; a 
swashbuckler of a hero, sowing wild oats with lavish 
and insolent hand! Or an aggressive strong-minded 
suffragist to be wooed back into the paths of racial 
discretion by a long-suffering far-sighted male philos- 



78 PLOTS AND PEKSONALITIES 

opher ! But this field of fashions in character Stephen 
Leacock has made so thoroughly his own in " Frenzied 
Fiction' ' and other essays that we need not advance 
into it. 

The preceding chapters have discussed invention with 
no appeal to a mysterious endowment called imagination. 
Psychologists in fact no longer subscribe to the doctrine 
of mental faculties neatly boxed off in separate compart- 
ments. Imagination means very simply that the whole 
mind is active in a certain way ; namely, in the breaking 
up of old experiences and the using of them in a novel 
fashion. 

The more old experience at its disposal in the form of 
memories, the richer the imagination. The more concrete 
the form assumed by memories as visual or auditory or 
olfactory images, the more vivid the imagination. The 
keener the sense of relationship, the more subtle the 
imagination. 

But the purpose of imagination is not to copy as does 
memory or imagery, nor to adjust to outer demands 
speedily and efficiently as intelligence does; it is defi- 
nitely constructive of new reality, expressive of a unique 
personality. One may find individuals of amazing in- 
formation, of extraordinarily vivid imagery, of super- 
fine intelligence who are not in the least imaginative. 

Imagination involves a freedom in the use of material 
for personal ends, a spontaneity in shaking wholes loose 
and recombining the elements into new wholes and, 
above all, an emotional set to consciousness that evokes 
all the powers of the mind in the service of a master' 
passion. 



WORD PAINTINGS 79 

Memory is fond of dating mental objects, giving them 
a local habitation and a place on the calendar. She 
paints you a picture of San Francisco Bay as it ap- 
peared one lovely morning in May, 1915, and you say, 
"Oh, yes, the Golden Gate at Exposition time. How 
beautiful it was that Sunday morning ! ' ' 

But you read a description of the Bay of Naples, and 
you construct in obedience to the suggestion of the writer 
a picture of blue waters and enchanting grottoes, a 
scene resembling perhaps your memory of the Bay of 
Monterey and yet not intended to mean that bay but 
another one outside of your personal experience, and so 
you use with some freedom your mental capital. You 
put it to new uses. The old material may be slightly 
modified or greatly modified. Elements from a score of 
different experiences may be recombined so that the 
entrancing country of your dreamscape may be con- 
structed from bits of scenery from Alaska and bits from 
the Bermudas. Your imagined scene may be utterly 
unlike any ever actually experienced. The autumn wood 
through which you stray on your sandals of fancy is 
filled with the light that never was on land or sea, and 
its golden leaves have been burnished by no earthly 
frost. 

But, to repeat, however far we seem to wander from 
reality we never paint with colors other than those 
nature has spread on the palette of the spectrum. "We 
are limited to the original elements given us in the world 
that excites eye and ear and other organs of sense. We 
can recombine those elements almost infinitely into origi- 
nal symphonies of colors and sounds and odors but we 



80 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

cannot create out of the void an absolutely new color 
nor call into being by sheer will a tone beyond the 
range of our hearing. Just as the man born blind must 
build his inner world out of sounds and odors and 
touches and no colors, so we must build our worlds from 
the elements given us by our senses. 

Concrete imagery of some sort is an aid to the imagina- 
tion but we should not use imaging and imagining as 
synonymous terms. Your imagery may be simply the 
form assumed by your memory of a particular event or 
situation. Very precise and detailed images are fre- 
quently reported by matter-of-fact unimaginative per- 
sons. Some of the most extraordinary visualizers I 
know are most literal-minded. They never get away 
from things as they experienced them. 

Imaginative work requires power to break up experi- 
ence, to shatter routine, to shake loose elements, to tease 
out of the closely woven fabric of life delicate threads 
for a new weaving. Devoid of imagination we are con- 
demned to move always in a limited and narrow world. 

But reorganization must follow analysis. The num- 
ber of elements that can be combined into a whole varies 
tremendously from one individual to another. Your 
greatest writer of the short-story may be helpless when 
confronted with the problem of organizing the life of a 
hero or of a community. We may learn to write in 
short-story or novel form but to a certain extent we are 
born short-story or long-story thinkers. Individual dif- 
ferences in the natural scope and rhythm of attention 
are basal to the kind of invention we find most suitable 
for expression. It is important that the embryo fictionist 



HOW DO YOU LIKE IRENE? 81 

decide in what field his natural talents lie. Here again 
the Personals may be nsed as a tool for analysis. Does 
the " Story of Quatre-Vingt-Quatre " or "The Muleteer's 
Quest" as skeletonized in the games in the last part of 
the book stimulate you more than the Tick-tock item of 
Chapter II? If so, you 're probably sentenced to hard 
mechanical labor that your brother who specializes on 
the short-story avoids. Of course you have your reward, 
in anticipated royalties ! 

The two short sequences of Personals that follow sug- 
gest different possibilities of development. Which is 
best suited to your pen? 

Arthur and Irene suggest a snappy short-story. 

"Arthur and Irene" 



ARTHUR.— You are most distracting-.— 



Irene 



TRENE. — I suppose I am, but so are you. 
x Do write. It 's still cheaper. Pitch into 
me all you like. — Arthur. 



ARTHUR.— Pitch into you as much as I 
■"■ like! I could shake you until your 
teeth rattled. — Irene. 



A RTHUR.— You idiot.— Irene. 



ARTHUR.— You don't deserve it, con- 
**■ sidering the wretched exhibition you 
made. — Irene. 



I ARTHUR. — Of course you would go and 
-"• do the silliest thing imaginable; now 
we are in a pickle. — Irene. 



82 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

"The Beach-Comber/ ' on the contrary, outlines a 
novel best published in serial form, the author himself to 
be doubtful about the next complication until the day 
before copy is due. It suggests adventures ad libitum. 

"The Beachcomber" 

ICCANINNY — You run? Plenty soon 
catch up. — Beach-Comber. 



CAP. — I have heard the drum in the dis- 
tance ; you know what it portends.— 
The Beach-Comber. 



LRIGHT CAP.— The Beach-Comber. 



/^AP. — One of these days I shall get my 
^ share, and then. — The Beach-Comber. 



The short-story writer need not handle numberless 
details as the novelist must but he should possess to an 
even higher degree power of selection. Crystallization 
of material must take place for both short-story and 
novel, but crystallization in the short-story must reach 
a higher degree of perfection. 

Crystallization is a miracle of the creative life. Per- 
haps it is to be understood only under a chemical 
analogy. It is an outcome of the saturation of the 
senses or of reflection. The artist who beholds the way- 
ward figures in a landscape suddenly cohere in a picture, 
fall into a pattern as do the bits of glass in a kaleido- 
scope; the musician who suddenly catches the melody 
that binds together vagrant phrases; the fictionist sud- 



CHARACTER CRYSTALLIZATION 



83 



denly confronted with the master-incident in his story, 
are alike aware of this curious fact of crystallization. 

One gets fine examples of crystallization in the Per- 
sonals. Possibly necessity is the mother of selection as 
well as of invention. Rambling costs too much. Some 
of the Personals are marvels of compression. Thus : 



ou ADAM? 



ALEXIS. — I am going to bang the big 



drum 



pRODIGAL SON.— Left or right? 



D 



AISY and Stan. — Sorry you did n't wait 
for the shoe. — Dad. 



QLAD E and He glad too. 



CYRIL. — The links are nearly rusted 
thrrmcrh 



through. 



TV/TELON. — Clubs are; for the rest, "na- 



poo." — Dido. 



Paulhan, the French psychologist, has classified the 
modes of invention under three heads. There are three 
forms of procedure: (1) development by evolution; 
(2) development by transformation; and (3) develop- 
ment by deviation. 

Sometimes invention moves along straight lines di- 
rectly towards an end which is so dominating as to sup- 



84 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

press all tendencies toward digression. Selection in this 
case takes place without effort as a matter of logical 
sequence. The classic example of such a type of delib- 
erate invention, dominated by a clear-cut purpose, is 
Poe's construction of "The Raven/' of which he has 
given us such a detailed description in his "Philosophy 
of Composition. ' ' Sardou and Zola are other writers 
who moved systematically, without swerving, toward a 
predetermined goal. In fact, to Zola literary creation 
seemed so rational a process that he conceived the 
function of the novel to be identical with that of experi- 
mental science. It is only a step from such self-con- 
scious logical technic as Poe's or Sardou 's, with its 
steadfast fixation of attention, to what may be called 
instinctive invention, invention that moves as inevitably 
toward its goal but moves so rapidly that all deliberation 
is abbreviated, short-circuited. The process appears 
automatic, unconscious. 

In development by transformation there is a relative 
independence of the various elements, any one of which 
may become the core of accretion and finally usurp the 
place of the first idea. If too many elements insist 
upon independent development anarchy may result. 
But a shift in sentiment or purpose has its own charm. 
No less a genius than de Musset declared that invention 
that proceeded in too straight a line lacked the supple- 
ness and charm of the unexpected. 

"It is too logical," he complained, "it never loses its 
head. As for me I often change my route ... I set 
out for Madrid and I arrive at Constantinople. ' ' 

In development by deviation undue evolution of cer- 



THE CAMEO CHAIN 



85 



tain phases may lead to abortive invention or may- 
result in double monsters. The digressions may be 
longer than the main theme or story. Yet in develop- 
ment by deviation we find by-products often of inesti- 
mable value. Irrelevancies lead to new avenues of 
thought. The search for a riming word may enrich the 
poem by unexpected associations, and yet that search 
may take the poem far afield even into the precincts of 
a riming dictionary. Seemingly irrelevant Personals 
may be knit together into an entertaining whole. 

How many Cameos in the following items can you set 
in one design? 



PAMEO. — Volo, non valeo. — Nordwind. 



^AMEO. — Can you call at H. S. on Tues.? 

* —Cliff. 



CAMEO.— A cruel mistake. The alliance 
was a disaster ; no one "would have 
imagined the anguish it has caused; we 
have made fools of ourselves. — Opal. 



CAMEO. — Loud but harmless; an empty 
barrel whose vaporings will soon evap- 
orate when met by Anemone. 



CAMEO.— Why try to split hairs? You 
recall Aug. 8th do you not? — W. 



CAMEO. — Why pass me by? Do you cut 
too big: a figure in your new sur- 
roundings ? — Pep. 



CAMEO. — Sorry to hear of distress : bear 
up for a time; the sun will soon shine 
again.— E. R. 



J. E. D, 



CHAPTER VII 

"WHAT KIND OP MIND THE NOVELIST NEEDS 

The fictionist is a fabricator. That is what the word 
means, the man who makes; the manufacturer, or since 
the work is done less with the hands than with the mind 
he had better be called the mentifacturer. The first 
fictionists were poets because writing was an unknown or 
rare art and verse is easier to remember than prose, 
especially when there is a tune to it. The word "poet" 
means the maker, the creator, one who produces some- 
thing new. 

There has been much theological discussion over the 
meaning of the verb "create" in the first chapter of 
Genesis, as to whether the world was made out of 
nothing or formed out of something that previously 
existed, a chaotic mass of matter. I do not know how 
that question was settled — if it was settled. But in the 
use of the word in relation to the world of literature, 
science, and art, there is no ambiguity. The creative 
genius is one who produces something new — a statue, a 
painting, a poem, a story, a plant, an invention, a piece 
of music, a dramatic role, a physical theory, a chemical 
compound, a type of architecture, a style in dress, a 
culinary confection, in short a new idea in whatever 
form or medium it may be expressed or embodied. 

86 



CAST OR CHISELED CHARACTERS 87 

Where he got the material does not matter. The sculp- 
tor may chisel his statue out of Carrara marble or cast it 
out of Montana copper. The painter may hire models or 
induce his friends to sit for him or use a lay figure or 
combine the sketches or recollections of types he has 
seen. So the writer may copy his characters from his 
associates — which is very danger ous — or borrow them 
from the classics or piece together scattered observa- 
tions from his life and reading. Anyhow he does not 
make his story ' ' out of whole cloth, ' ' as the saying goes. 
Since a novel necessarily consists of a mixture of fact 
and fiction the question arises how much may the facts 
be Actionized ? Even the most imaginative of romancers, 
even a Poe, a Maeterlinck, or a Dunsany, must use 
earthly clay for the foundation of his fantastic fabrica- 
tions. A realistic novelist whose aim is to give the im- 
pression of actuality must make more plentiful use of 
ready-made material. The percentage of fact and fiction 
in the mixture does not matter so long as the whole is 
sufficiently fused together to make the mass homogene- 
ous. Almost all writers use in part real scenes, such as 
Broadway or the Strand, make reference to historic 
events, such as the Civil or the World War, and intro- 
duce actual personages, either public characters or 
acquaintances in disguise. On this point Oscar Wilde is, 
as usual, dogmatic, paradoxical, and fallacious. He says : 

To introduce real people is a sign of an unimaginative 
mind. . . . The only real people are the people who 
never existed, and if a novelist is base enough to go to 
life for his personages he should at least pretend that 
they are creations and not boast of them as copies. 



88 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

If the first statement were true we should have to rule 
out many of our foremost novelists as having * ' unimagi- 
native minds." But the advice that real personages 
should be sufficiently transfigured so as to be unrecog- 
nizable is sound — if only for fear of libel-suits. 

If a novelist introduces real people and places, actual 
events and historic characters, how far is he at liberty to 
go in falsifying them for artistic purposes ? The answer 
to this is — so far as he can without being found out. 
The amount of permissible distortion depends — if I may 
put it in scientific terms — inversely on the presumed 
intelligence of the reader and directly on the square of 
the distance in time and space. For instance, if you lay 
your scene in the Piazza di San Marco at Venice it 
would not be safe for you to put the Campanile on the 
other side of the Grand Canal because so many people 
have been to Venice. But you could take more liberties 
in the arrangement of the architecture of Mecca or 
Lhasa that are still out of the main line of the person- 
ally-conducted tours. Probably even these secret cities 
will soon be familiar to all of us through the movies and 
then the novelist will have to walk warily in them. The 
spread of elementary science has made it unsafe for him 
to see the new moon in the east as the older novelists did 
with perfect impunity. While an author wants to con- 
tribute to the pleasure of the reader he does not like to 
contribute the sort of pleasure that consists in pointing 
out his blunders. 

Then, too, some authors have a conscience and are 
very scrupulous about getting their facts right. Mrs. 
Humphry Ward is said to have sent over to a friend in 



MKS. WAED OUT OF DATE 89 

Paris to count the lamp-posts on a certain Paris bridge 
that she wanted to refer to in one of her novels. Yet in 
spite of snch extreme precautions she was not impec- 
cable. Leslie Stephen, the great English critic, was 
delighted when he caught her bringing a pair of lovers 
to Kensington Gardens in the first week in October and 
making them take chairs, whereas by the providence of 
the Office of Works chairs are removed from Kensington 
Gardens on September 30. 

This question becomes serious only in the case of his- 
torical novels. Here the author has no right to falsify 
known facts about prominent personages and important 
events even for artistic effect. Kather should he take 
delight in weaving his fiction into the warp of fact with- 
out displacing a thread of it. When Michelangelo painted 
the Sistine Chapel he did not ask to have the vaulting 
changed to suit his painting. No, he fitted his prophets 
and sibyls into the spaces and with such ingenuity that 
people will stand and look at them until they get cricks 
in their necks. If an author will not take the trouble to 
conform to historical accuracy he would better follow 
the example set by Anthony Hope in "The Prisoner of 
Zenda, ' ' as so many writers have done, and set his scene 
in some artificial German principality or Balkan state. 

Sir Harry Johnston has, I think, gone farther in 
combining real and fictitious personages than any other 
author. In his novels he introduces characters from 
Dickens and Shaw, characters of his own creation, 
prominent men and himself. When we open his "Gay- 
Dombeys" we enter a reception-room where we meet 
Mr. and Mrs. Paid Dombey, Henry Irving, Miss Knip- 



90 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

per-Totes, Arthur Balfour discussing theology with Mrs. 
Humphry Ward, Sir Arthur Sullivan playing "The 
Lost Chord," Frederick Chick, George* Du Maurier 
taking notes for a ' 'Punch' ' picture, Sir James and 
Lady Tudell, Oscar Wilde with a yellow carnation, Sir 
Barnet-Skettles, Arthur Pinero, and Lord Feenix. As 
we collect our wits and find out who 's who we realize 
that half of the guests have walked out of Dickens's 
novels and the other half out of real life. 

Even the highest creative imagination must have ma- 
terial to work on. If Shakspere and Michelangelo had 
been confined from babyhood in a bare room they could 
have produced no plays or pictures. How much the 
author adds to his material, how much constructive or 
reconstructive work he puts into it depends on circum- 
stances. He may merely shape it by eliminating the 
unessential, as the sculptor does in making a marble 
statue, or he may fuse the entire mass of material in the 
fiery furnace of his imagination and cast it at once into 
its final form like the sculptor working in bronze. In 
general I should say that the latter method showed the 
greater genius and produced the greater literature 
though the champions of the naturalistic school like Zola 
would dispute this. Of course in favoring the complete 
recasting of reality I do not mean that the result is best 
when most unreal. I do not regard the hundred-armed 
Siva or the three-headed Cerberus as the highest achieve-' 
ments of the creative imagination. 

To " imagine' ' means primarily to form an image of 
something not seen at the time, and not a mere memory- 



IMAGINING KEAL THINGS 91 

picture. The thing pictured may not be " imaginary' ' 
in an absolute sense. It may be real in past or future or 
elsewhere. A historian may imagine life in ancient 
Athens and the more accurate and lifelike his depiction 
the better. The inventor may imagine a machine such 
as the world has never seen until he makes it actual. 
We all can imagine what goes on at home when we are 
away and the stronger our imagination the more suc- 
cessful we are in hitting the truth. Probably the best 
description of the San Francisco earthquake — I beg 
pardon, San Francisco fire — was written by Will Irwin 
in New York for the "Sun" from such fragmentary 
information as came over the wires and from his own 
intimate knowledge of the city. 

A person gifted with the creative imagination will 
construct a scene or a character from the slightest hint 
as a paleontologist will reconstruct a prehistoric animal 
from a single bone. The surmise of the scientist may be 
later confirmed or disproved by the discovery of this 
complete skeleton, but nobody cares whether the novelist 
is right or wrong so long as the characters he has created 
have sufficient verisimilitude to deceive us or to con- 
vince us. 

The inferior novelist combines incongruous traits in 
the same crude way as the primitive artist who devised 
the centaur, the mermaid, and the angel by combining 
part of a man with part of a horse, a fish, and a bird. 
The result is no more artistic than the drawings we used 
to make as children by drawing the head of some animal, 
folding over the paper and passing it on to another who 



92 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

drew the body and then to a third who added the legs. 
The mature mind is amazed or disgusted with such 
monstrosities whatever the skill of the artist. 

Nature's method of constructing a character out of 
preexistent traits is more subtle. She provides each 
person with twenty-four chromosomes made from the 
fusion of forty-eight. Each chromosome carries with it 
the determinant of a host of characteristics handed down 
from the remotest ancestors. Thus a man may inherit 
his blue eyes from his mother and his strong chin from 
his father. His musical genius from one grandmother 
and his sharp temper from his other grandmother, his 
religion from one grandfather and his rheumatism from 
the other, but all so deftly combined as to make a single 
and more or less harmonious individual. The artistic 
author follows nature 's method and combines such char- 
acter-chromosomes as he can find with such skill as he 
can command to create a personality that may seem to 
us as real as any living person and may live much longer. 

Two kinds of ability, therefore, the novelist needs: 
(1) the power of acquisition and (2) the power of con- 
struction. Both processes may be more or less uncon- 
scious. His material multiplies miraculously as he uses 
it like the widow's cruse of oil. 

A friend of mine who wanted to write a great novel 
set out to earn enough money for his support while 
working on it. After carefully canvassing the field he 
came to the conclusion that the cheapest fiction would 
pay best, that he could make more money by writing for 
one or two cents a word than for the five or ten that he 
could have got by taking more pains and publishing in 



PLOT PEDDLING 93 

the more limited field of the better class of magazines. 
He registered a vow to stop writing cheap stories at the 
end of one year, no matter how profitable he found the 
profession. He resigned his salaried position and 
launched out as a free lance with only three plots for 
stories in his drawer and some doubt in his mind as to 
whether he could think up enough to keep him running. 
He only used one of these, for better ideas came to him 
and at the end of the year he had a hundred unused 
plots left over and had earned five thousand dollars. 
He then wrote a first class novel. 

The manufacture of cheap fiction has, like other trades, 
become more efficient and profitable by organization and 
division of labor. A man who has to pound out five 
thousand words or more a day on his typewriter has no 
time to beat about the bush for higher ideas. Possibly, 
too, he may be deficient in inventive power although he 
is a fluent and versatile writer. On the other hand we 
all know of men who are fertile in invention, who can 
tell us "good stories" by the hour but could not write 
one of them, possibly from lack of literary training, 
possibly from lack of patience, possibly because of some 
inhibitory complex that paralyzes their imagination 
whenever they pick up a pen. A man who has this gift 
and incapacity may find occupation as a professional 
plotter. In New York City the plotter makes the rounds 
•of his circle of writers as a grocer calls on housewives 
to take orders. He displays his wares, consisting per- 
haps of a newspaper clipping, a novel idea, an ingenious 
complication, a quaint character, an unusual setting, a 
new theme, and the like. The writer picks out and pays 



94 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

for any that take his fancy and the plot-peddler packs 
up the rest and takes them on to his next client. 

But the rapid writer may not only lack time, patience, 
or ability to invent or hunt up plots but also time, 
patience, or ability to polish up his stuff. So a third 
party may come into the combination, the finisher, who 
revises the English, puts in the proper punctuation, and 
prepares it for the press. Possibly the writer does not 
write at all but talks his stories into a dictaphone and 
leaves it to the typewriter girl to transcribe and finish up. 
Charles Phelps Cushing in his little handbook of advice 
to the free lance, "If You Don't Write Fiction,' ' says: 
"I know of several famous magazine-writers who never 
in their lives have got their material into print in the 
form in which it was originally submitted. They are 
what the trade calls ' go-getters. ' They deliver the story 
as best they can and a more skilful stylist completes the 
job." 

Of late it has been often found profitable to add a 
fourth party, the literary agent, who acts as salesman. 
An author may be temperamentally unsuited to drive a 
hard bargain for his own writings and anyhow he may 
waste as much time selling one story as would suffice 
him to write another. But the literary agent knows how 
much each periodical pays and what are the idiosyn- 
crasies of its editor. He therefore does not often waste 
postage on impossible periodicals or irritate their editors 
by bothering them with articles that they can not use. 
He watches the literary market and feels the public pulse 
like a stock-broker and so advises his clients, the authors, 
that it is useless for them to write, for instance, any more 



FACTOKY-MADE FICTION 95 

war stories at present and they had better turn to home 
scenes, or that pessimism and muck-raking are on the 
decline and there is likely to be a brisk demand for 
optimism and uplift. In this way the literary agent may 
well earn his 10 per cent, commission. 

The motion-picture business, though younger than 
authorship, has carried systematization and specializa- 
tion still further. The plot or germinal idea is provided 
in the synopsis, which possibly may be less than a page 
and yet bring a high price. This is developed and 
written out, usually by some one else, in the scenario, 
and from this a third party prepares the complete 
continuity which corresponds to the prompt-book of a 
play. Besides this, several other persons, including the 
various state censors, may have a hand in the production 
before it finally appears on the screen. 

The process is like the production of the "genuine 
hand-painted oil paintings" that are thrown in at the 
price of the gilt frame. They are, I believe, painted 
simultaneously on a long strip of canvas, one artist 
putting in the clouds, another the trees and rocks, and a 
third the cows and people. This saves the time wasted 
in changing colors and cleaning brushes. Speed and' 
facility increase with practice. No one artist is equally 
apt at clouds and cows. 

Such cooperative production and division of labor, 
whether employed in painting, motion-pictures, stories, 
automobiles, or clothing, result in large, rapid, and cheap 
production of marketable wares but necessarily at a 
sacrifice of individual distinction. The output is stand- 
ardized and odd sizes are not kept in stock. The fiction 



96 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

that follows a formula is more sure of a sale than that 
which strikes out a new style. Its place is all ready for 
it. Its audience is seated and waiting. It is freer from 
faults due to the inevitable deficiencies of an individual 
and from whatever qualities may offend the general 
public and interfere with its wide popularity. 

But the standardization process in removing idio- 
syncrasies rubs out originality. The peculiar taste and 
tang of the author's individuality has been boiled off 
and has left the residue flat. The prolonged consump- 
tion of such factory-made fiction or film induces distaste 
in the dullest mind and there is a revulsion in popular 
preference. Then the publisher or producer is left with 
a lot of material that is "just the same" as that which 
formerly caught the crowd and he is puzzled to know 
why it has lost its pulling power. He can not find any 
fault with its technic. The English is unexceptionable, 
the construction is correct, the photography better than 
ever. If the book or picture that now fails to arouse 
interest had been produced twenty years before it would 
have created a sensation and set a standard that would 
now be regarded with despairing admiration. If any 
one of the novelettes that fill the fifteen-cent magazines 
had been printed in the eighteenth century it would now 
be considered by critics to have been a work of genius, 
a marvel of vivacity, ingenuity and human interest, and 
it would be required reading as a classic for entrance 
to college. 

The critics would be quite right. Only a genius could 
have produced such works two hundred years ago but 
nowadays any diligent writer can turn them out by the 



FOR ALL HAVE GOT THE SEED 97 

bale. In the fifteenth century only a genius in naviga- 
tion could cross the Atlantic but any common captain 
can do it now. Columbus has shown how to stand the 
egg on its end. An automobile would have been a 
miracle a century ago. It is as easy now to forge Kipling 
as to forge Corot. A skilful writer of no originality 
could write a story of Indian life that if it could have 
been inserted in that unique volume of " Plain Tales 
from the Hills" would not appear incongruous from 
inferiority. 

The reason why there is now an overproduction of the 
sort of fiction that once was a rarity is that writers 
have found out the formula. The reason why readers 
turn with sudden distaste from a form of fiction with 
which they have been overfed is because they too have 
found out the formula. The development of the plot 
proceeds along familiar lines and there is no surprise 
or suspense to excite their curiosity. But the sort of 
writing that has ceased to interest a sophisticated class 
may find an eager public on another level. The play that 
bores Broadway because its plot is trite, its characters 
conventional, and its stage effects familiar will rightly 
be welcomed with enthusiasm at Pumpkin Center where 
the opera-house is opened to a "talky" only once a year. 
A mother, hunting at Christmas for something nice and 
new for her children's presents, looked with dissatisfac- 
tion over the stock of dolls, tops, and whistles and com- 
plained to the shopkeeper: 

"But these toys are so old!" 

"Yes, ma'am," was the reply, "but the children are 



98 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

There is always arising a new generation of readers 
to whom the old tales may be retold. Out-of-fashion 
clothing and books must find a place somewhere. The 
novels that were popular with our grandfathers still hold 
their own with the "best sellers" of the month; if not 
in the book-stores, at least in the libraries. The reviewers 
are preoccupied with the present. They scan the surface 
of the sea in search of strange craft and take little notice 
of what has sunk into the literary subconscious. One 
could not gather from their book talk what is really 
being read, any more than one could rely upon the 
fashion column headed "What Is Being Worn" as a 
guide to the current costumes of the mass of the Ameri- 
can people. It takes all sorts of people to make a world 
and only a small part of them get into print. 

I have mentioned the cooperative production of litera- 
ture not as a model system but to show how many 
different qualities the novelist needs. If he is to work 
independently he must be his own plotter, writer, typist, 
finisher, and salesman. If he is to be successful in every 
sense of the word he must be original in conception, 
ingenious in plot development, proficient in character 
drawing, quick to catch personal peculiarities of dia- 
logue, physiognomy, costume, and mannerisms, acquisi- 
tive of all sorts of information, rapid in writirig, patient 
in revision, submissive to correction, sensitive to the 
fluctuations of public taste, and acute at bargaining. 

Literature, like all the arts, is a manifestation of the 
play impulse. The difficulty the novelist has to solve is 
how to keep it play when he has to make it work. Play 
is essentially a release of the spirit from the trammels 



GOOD FICTION IS AUTOBIOGRAPHY 99 

of compulsory labor. But play has its laws although 
they may not be in Hoyle. A man can not get away 
from himself by getting out of routine. On the contrary 
he has in spontaneous activity a chance to display his 
true self. Novels, like dreams, are often more self- 
revealing than the author realizes. Arnold Bennett is 
very frank about this, as he is about most things. He 
says: 

Whence and how does the novelist obtain the vital 
issue which must be his material? The answer is that 
he digs it out of himself. First-class fiction is, and must 
be, in the final resort autobiographical. What else should 
it be? The novelist may take notes of phenomena likely 
to be of use to him. And he may acquire the skill to 
invent very apposite illustrative incident. But he can 
not invent psychology. . . . When the real intimate 
work of creation has to be done — and it has to be done 
on every page — the novelist can only look within for 
effective aid. . . . Good fiction is autobiography dressed 
in the colors of all mankind. 

The necessarily autobiographical nature of fiction ac- 
counts for the creative repetition to which all novelists — 
including the most powerful — are reduced. They monot- 
onously yield again and again to the strongest predilec- 
tions of their own individuality. Again and again they 
think they are creating, by observation, a quite new 
character — and lo ! . . . when finished it is an old one — 
autobiographical psychology has triumphed! ... No 
creative artist ever repeated himself more brazenly or 
more successfully than Balzac. His miser, his vicious 
delightful actress, his vicious delightful duchess, his 
young-man-about-town, his virtuous young man, his 
heroic weeping virgin, his angelic wife and mother, his 
poor relation, and his faithful stupid servant — each is 
continually popping up with a new name in the Human 



100 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Comedy. . . . Hamlet of Denmark was only the last and 
greatest of a series of Shaksperean Hamlets. 

The reason why the released fancy .of the fictionist 
reaches his readers is because their spirits are also in 
prison. Like the wives of Bluebeard in Maeterlinck's 
version of the story, they are waiting the arrival of 
Ariana with the key. Some of our best traits are etio- 
lated and atrophied for lack of air and exercise. Even 
our unsocial tendencies, quite properly confined, may 
safely be sublimated in romance. So pious people take 
to pirate stories. The most law-abiding citizen may like 
to travel in imagination the road to Mandalay " where 
there aren't no ten commandments 1 an' a man .can 
raise a thirst." The most tender-hearted lady of my 
acquaintance delights in reading herself to sleep on the 
gory Polish romances of Sienkiewicz. 

Professor Seashore in his "Introduction to Psy- 
chology" cites the case of a friend whose dreams before 
the war had always been of a conspicuously pugnacious 
character, in strong contrast to the working life of a 
staid professor. But while he was in the service, even 
in the midst of battle, his dreams were of a placid 
character. 

So in the spontaneous dreams of sleep, or in the 

personally-conducted dreams of novel reading, the 

imagination seeks relief in activities far removed from 

the customary trains of thought. This is in accordance 

with the rule of the gymnasium that in play one shall 

1 1 never could understand this line for I was taught that the 
ten commandments originated "somewheres east of Suez." 



GETTING OUT OF A RUT 101 

exercise those muscles that are not employed in one's 
occupation. But this is easier said than done. One 
can not say to one's fancies as the teacher says to the 
pupils at recess, "Now, children, run out and play." 
The mind is more plastic than elastic. It requires a 
jerk and a jolt to get it out of its accustomed groove 
as it does a wheel out of its rut. 

It would be vain for a teacher of English composition 
to say to his students, "Now be original," or, what is 
much the same thing and quite as difficult, "Now be 
yourself." They can find out what they are only by 
trying to be other people. It is therefore good practice 
for the neophyte author — or the veteran author — to at- 
tempt something very different from what he takes to 
naturally, even something distasteful and difficult, just 
as his physical director makes him do the exercises that 
are hardest for him. 

I once knew an artist, a fine painter, though his works 
were of a conventional type. When the futurist and 
cubist movements first appeared they excited him to 
furious indignation. He could find no language strong 
enough to denounce those who were fooling the public 
into accepting these absurdities as real art. He took an 
active part in the Fakers' Exhibition that attempted — 
with difficulty — to parody the new school*. To this he 
contributed a canvas on which he had drawn the most 
grotesque human forms he could imagine and splashed 
them with the crudest colors. When he got the canvas 
back he set it on the easel in his studio where it made 
an amusing contrast with the stately historical paintings 
that surrounded it. But as he looked at it it seemed 



102 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

to him that something might be made of it so he began 
to paint it over into the semblance of real life and 
finally turned out a picture that he was proud to own. 
It was not at all in the modern manner that he hated, 
yet it was a new departure for him and more original 
than his previous work. The very effort to outdo the 
futurists in extravagance had broken the bonds that had 
bound him to the traditional forms and freed his genius 
to take its own course. Many a good poet has begun 
as a parodist. Kipling began his poem on the American 
spirit : 

If the led striker call it a strike 
Or the papers call it a war, 

They know not much what I am like, 
Nor what he is, my avatar. 

as a silly parody on Emerson's "Brahma": 

If the red slayer thinks he slays, 
Or if the slain think he is slain, 

They know not well the subtle ways 
I keep and pass and turn again. 

Yet before he got through with it he had put in some 
of the best lines he ever wrote. 

E. E. S. 



CHAPTER VIII 

WHERE THE WRITER GETS HIS PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

The mind of a novelist picks up ideas spontaneously 
and unconsciously wherever he goes, as an electrified 
glass rod attracts bits of paper and straws. Names, 
phrases, and incidents are stored away for future use 
in his head or notebook. Any literary biography will 
supply examples of this faculty. 

Dickens caught the name of Pickwick from a stage- 
coach running between Bath and London and then had 
the cheek to make Sam Weller accuse the proprietor of 
stealing the name from his hero: 

"Not content with writin , up 'Pickwick' they put 
'Moses' afore it, vich I call addin' insult to injury, as 
the parrot said ven they not only took him from hiS 
native land but made him talk the English langwidge 
arterwards. — Ain 't nobody to be whopped for takin ' this 
here liberty, sir ? ' ' 

The appearance and attire of Mr. Pickwick were de- 
scribed and prescribed by the publisher, Mr. Chapman, 
who had seen such a looking man at Richmond. Dickens 
drew David Copperfield from himself. D. C. is really 
CD. 

103 



104 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Two of the best American short stories, 0. Henry's 
"Springtime a la Carte' ' and Edna Ferber's "Roast- 
Beef Medium," came from the uninspiring items of a 
restaurant menu. 

Ethel Kelly, walking on Riverside Drive, saw a young 
girl elaborately dressed coming out of a handsome 
apartment-house. There was a sadness and aged expres- 
sion about her face that attracted the attention of Miss 
Kelly and she began to imagine a story that would 
account for it. She picked a name out of the telephone- 
directory and wrote "Beauty and Mary Blair." 

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes in the course of his medical 
reading happened upon a case of a woman who had been 
bitten by a snake and was said to show reptilian charac- 
teristics every year. This gave him the plot for his 
gruesome tale of "Elsie Venner." 

But he did not handle the theme with the imagination 
of Hawthorne who built up "The Scarlet Letter" out 
of his musings over an old law case in which he 
happened to find a reference to an enactment of the 
Plymouth colony in 1658 reading as follows: 

It is enacted by the Court and the Authoritie thereof 
that whosoever shall commit Adultery shall be severely 
Punished by whipping . . . and likewise to were two 
Capital letters viz. A D cut out in cloth and sewed on 
their upermost garments on their arme or backe. 

As starting points for "The Marble Faun" Haw- 
thorne had the furry-eared statue by Praxiteles and a 
story of a Protestant who had been impelled to confess 
a crime to a priest. The notebooks in which Hawthorne 



BROWNING'S SOURCE-BOOK 105 

records his gropings after "Dr. Gramshaw's Secret" are 
most instructive reading for the young writer. 

The most remarkable instance of the transmutation 
of crude fact into the pure gold of poetry is ' ' The Ring 
and the Book," for it gives both the theory and the 
result of the alchemical process. From a bookstall in 
the Piazza of San Lorenzo Browning bought for fifteen 
cents a dry-as-dust report of a Roman murder trial of 
1689 and from this he evolved ten poems, each giving 
a different view of the case but all based upon the same 
fundamental facts. The "Old Yellow Book" was pub- 
lished in facsimile with critical notes by the Carnegie 
Institution of Washington and a translation is printed 
in Everyman's Library. A comparison of the case-book 
with the poem is well worth making by any one interested 
in the technic of literary construction for it shows how 
scrupulously Browning has used every scrap of infor- 
mation the documents contain, following closely his 
authorities in names, places, dates, and events, often 
incorporating passages almost literally. Only in one 
instance does he deviate from a date. This was in 
changing CapmsaccM's rescue of Pompilia from April 
29 to 23. It is not art but the lack of art that causes 
some writers to stretch their poetic license to the utmost 
to cover careless juggling with historic facts. 

About twenty years ago, when Owen Wister's Wild 
West stories of "The Virginian" and "Lin McLean" 
were published, a literary club of Laramie, to which 
Miss Downey and I belonged, had the privilege of 
reading them in parallel with the notes by Dr. Amos W. 
Barber (Dr. Amory W. Barker of the stories) who had 



106 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

furnished Wister with much of his material. 2 All the 
places, many of the characters, and most of the incidents 
were known to members of the club present. We knew 
the bishop who was "not only a good man but a man.' , 
He was Bishop Talbot, later of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 
We knew the babies (there were really only two of 
them) whom the Virginian mixed up at the ball by 
changing their clothes. We had the original and un- 
expurgated version of the funeral at "Drybone" (old 
Fort Fetterman) and of the lynching of Cattle Kate. 
This miscellaneous collection of the crude stories that 
might be heard about any camp-fire where frontiersmen 
were gathered had been given coherence and added 
interest by grouping them about two well-defined charac- 
ters, although the reader will find in the first edition 
the marks of incomplete amalgamation. It was ex- 
tremely instructive to observe where and how the art 
of the novelist had been employed in putting this crude 
material into literary form, by what selections, con- 
densations, eliminations, and complications it had been 
made more dramatic and vivid. 

But even the slight deviations from the truth which 
Mr. Wister consciously or unconsciously made are suffi- 
cient to offend the literalist. 

A friend of mine, a man who had become eminent in 
his branch of science because he possessed in a marked 
degree what William James calls "the passion for 
veracity/ ' naturally had little tolerance for fiction in or 
out of books and it was only when he was sick and 

a I published a sort of a key to Owen Wister 's stories in the 
" Congregationalism ' in 1903. 



THE SCIENTIFIC CONSCIENCE 107 

helpless that his wife took advantage of the occasion 
to read to him "The Virginian.' ' In the midst of the 
story of the honeymoon on the island where the Vir- 
ginian catches trout for snpper, she heard a groan from 
her husband. 

"What is the matter? Are you in pain?" she asked. 

"Why can't that man tell the truth?" came in de- 
spairing tones from the bed. 

"What has he said now that is wrong?" 

"Why, that stream was not stocked with trout till ten 
years later," was the answer of the man of science. 

Many years ago I met a lady from Simla and naturally 
began to talk of Kipling, over whom I, like all the young 
men of my time, was wildly enthusiastic. 

But she responded coldly, "We do not think much of 
Kipling in Simla." 

"Well," I admitted, "doubtless he would not be 
popular in Simla society but I suppose his descriptions 
of it are true to life." 

".Indeed they are not," she responded indignantly. 
"I know many of the people and incidents he uses in 
his stories and they are altogether wrong. Some of the 
remarks that he ascribes to Mrs. HauJcsbee were really 
made by Mrs. Reiver and he has the Gadsbys and the 
Gayersons all mixed up." 

But although Kipling may, for obvious reasons, con- 
fuse the attributes of his models he is rarely guilty of 
"miscalling technicalities" as M' Andrews would say. 
I don't know whether he has "The Song of the Tonga- 
Bar" down right or not, but I know he is correct on 
the "Song of the Purple Emperor." I am not a judge 



108 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

of the dialect of the Calcutta bazaar, but I can certify 
to the accuracy of that of the Kansas City roundhouse. 
In that marvelous ninth chapter of "Captains Cour- 
ageous' ' — which I can never read aloud because of tears 
in my eyes and a choke in my throat — he has done two 
things that no other author has ever done: he has told 
of the joy a man who can handle a time-table takes in 
routing a car, and he has described a transcontinental 
trip in flashes of scenery and sensations of noise, jar, 
and heat that combine to give the hurry of it. Some- 
body asked Kipling how he got the railroad route worked 
out so well and he replied, "I simply wrote to the 
general passenger agent at Chicago and asked what was 
the quickest way to get a special car from San Diego 
to Boston. " The fishermen's talk and technicalities he 
picked up mostly in a few days' lounging and listening 
on the Gloucester wharves and a trip to the cod banks. 
The rest is genius. 

Where Rudyard Kipling got the germinal thought of 
one of his greatest poems, ' ' M 'Andrew 's Hymn, ' ' is told 
in the letter prefaced to the poem when it was first 
published in "Scribner's Magazine," December, 1894: 

And the night we got in, sat up from twelve to four 
with the chief engineer, who could not get to sleep 
either — said the engines made him feel quite poetical at 
times, and told me things about his past life. He seems 
a pious old bird ; but I wish I had known him earlier in 
the voyage. 

0. Henry, like Dante, got his characters from within 
a few blocks of where he lived. In his window over- 



FROM 0. HENRY'S WINDOW 109 

looking Irving Place "he would sit for hours watching 
the world go by along the street, not gazing idly, but 
noting men and women with penetrating eyes, making 
guesses at what they did for a living, and what fun they 
got out of it when they had earned it." 

"But," said 0. Henry, "there never is a story where 
there seems to be one. That 's one rule I always work 
on." 

Caroline Francis Richardson, in telling 3 how 0. Henry 
found inspiration in the narrow dingy streets of the old 
French Quarter of New Orleans, remarks: 

But 0. Henry used his "copy" differently from other 
story-tellers who have found suggestion in New Orleans. 
In all his stories, wherever placed, he makes use of 
every detail that will add reality to a character or an 
occurrence. But he does not introduce localities and 
localisms merely for their intrinsic interest. 

This is an important point. An inferior writer will 
load up his story with local color merely because he has 
got it in his note-books and doesn't want to waste it. 

Henry James, suffering from toothache, felt a wicked 
impulse to harrow up the feelings of other people. The 
result was "The Turn of the Screw." 

"Jane Eyre" was done on a dare. Emily and Anne 
Bronte said that a heroine must be beautiful. Charlotte 
said she would write a novel in which the heroine should 
be small and plain as herself, and yet be interesting. 
And she did it. 

"Frankenstein" was written by Mrs. Shelley in com- 

8 In Cl Waifs and Strays.' > 



110 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

petition with Byron to pass away the time during a 
rainy week in Switzerland after they had been reading 
German ghost-stories. 

Hall Caine says he gets the plots of his stories out 
of the Bible. 

Kipling — well, he cites high precedent for his practice : 

"When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre, 
He 'd 'eard men sing by land and sea; 

An' what he thot 'e might require, 
'E went and took — the same as me! 

Moliere had the same motto : " Je prends mon bien ou 
je le trouve." Or as Lowell put it: 

The thought is old and oft exprest 
'Tis his at last who says it best. 
I '11 try my fortune with the rest. 

Maeterlinck was well named "the Belgian Shakspere." 
His first play, "La Princesse Maleine," was full of 
Shaksperean echoes. His "Monna Vanna" was inspired 
by Browning's "Luna," as Professor Phelps discovered, 4 
and as the author willingly acknowledged. He took 
parts of his "Mary Magdalene" from Paul Heyse's play 
of the same name. 

To trace out the sources of Shakspere 's plots and per- 
sonalities has afforded occupation and given doctorates 
to innumerable students in English. As many more 
could find employment and gain degrees by finding out 
how many modern novelists and playwrights have bor- 
rowed from Shakspere. It is futile to pursue such 

4 "Essays on Modern Dramatists, ' ' p. 183. 



LITERARY HEIRLOOMS 111 

research to obtain proof of plagiarism or to support 
claims of priority, but these studies are of interest to 
the writer for they show where authors get their material, 
why they choose what they do, and what use they make 
of it. 

There are certain plots or situations which have been 
used by successive generations of romancers for twenty- 
five hundred years. The Greek legends still inspire our 
poets. "The Story of Two Brothers," first known to us 
in an Egyptian manuscript more than three thousand 
years old, has been traced through the literature of a 
dozen different countries from India to France. 5 One 
incident of it appears in Genesis, Chap. XXXIX, v. 
6-20. 

It is not for laziness that authors follow the old lines. 
Nor is it, as is often said, because it is impossible to 
invent new plots. Any of us can invent new plots. 
The trouble with them is that they will not work so well 
as the old ones. The oldest plot you can find in litera- 
ture is the surest to make a hit with the newest magazine 
— if it is disguised in fresh clothes. If I were a motion- 
picture producer I would set my scenario writers to 
searching the classics for new material. For instance, 
"The Adventures of Leucippe and Clitophon," as told 
by Achilles Tatius of Alexandria, ought to make a hit 
on the screen. It is one long chase by land and sea with 
hair 's-breadth escapes at the end of each reel — I mean, 
book. Twice the heroine is killed and cut to pieces in 
sight of her pursuing lover, yet in the end they are 

5 See "Les Coxites populaires de l'Egypte aneienne, ' ' by 
Maspero. 



112 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

happily married, and no magic about it either — all 
mysteries explained to the satisfaction of the most skep- 
tical mind. 

The creative faculty, I suppose, exists in all of us to 
some degree. But it is suppressed at an early age in 
most of us and emerges later, if at all, with difficulty. 
As Saint-Beuve puts it: " There is in most men a poet 
who died young and whom the man survives. ' ' 6 The 
chief difference between the practised writer and the 
amateur is that the former has overcome the initiatory 
inhibition and is able to start off as soon as he sits down 
at his typewriter. The latter stands shivering on the 
shore, dreading the plunge. He is afraid to let himself 
think. 

It may be a trivial accidental thing that starts a man 's 
mind to working, a chance phrase, a newspaper head- 
line, one of these Personals, a name in a directory or on 
a signboard, a fragment of a forgotten dream, a figure 
on the wallpaper, a blot on the desk. Such an instigator 
the chemist calls a ' ' catalyst. ' ' A kettle may be full of 
inert chemicals, cold and still. He drops in a minute 
crystal or a bit of spongy metal and the whole mass 
boils up and something new comes into being. It acts 
like a spark to a barrel of gunpowder. It sets free sup- 
pressed energy. 

The character of the stimulus depends of course upon 
the person. Some imaginations are set off by visual sug- 
gestion, some by auditory, some by smells. Valery Lar- 
baud gets inspiration for his stories from playing with 

8 II existe dans la plupart des hommes un po&te mort jeune a 
qui l'homme survit. 



HOW DOES MARY JANE LOOK? 113 

the little pewter figures made by Ernst Heinrichsen of 
Niirnberg. Their costumes and chance attitudes on his 
desk suggest to him characters and adventures. Another 
French author. Ponson du Terrail, uses paper puppets in 
working out the plots of his numerous novels of adven- 
ture, taking the precaution to lay them down when they 
are dead to prevent their reappearing later in the story, 
as has happened with some of our own writers of this 
sort of fiction. Massenet composed his opera on the 
Alexandrian Thais while watching the manceuvers of his 
pet cat. Ibsen got inspiration for his satiric dramas by 
watching a scorpion sting himself in fury. 

A successful New York editor of a group of fiction 
magazines has employed an imagination test very similar 
to ours in weeding out the unpromising from the swarm 
of would-be writers who besieged his office. He writes 
a name on a card, say, "Mary Jane," and passes it 
across the desk to the applicant. He then puts to him a 
rapid-fire series of questions. "What is the color of 
her hair?" "How is she dressed?" "Where does she 
live ? " " What is her father 's occupation f " " What is 
her chief desire in life?" If the literary aspirant has 
no notion of any of these things the editor regards him 
as not worth trying to train into a story- writer. 

People vary widely in their susceptibility to the sug- 
gestion of names, but doubtless everyone is uncon- 
sciously influenced by personal associations, traditional 
connotation, or the subtle insinuation of the sound. An 
appropriate name for the hero or heroine, especially if 
it is also to serve as the title, will contribute much to 
the success or failure of a novel. It would be an inter- 



114 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

esting task for some psychologist to work out the causes 
of our sense of appropriateness of the names of persons 
and of animals. Charles D. Stewart in his "Partners of 
Providence'' tells how fourteen-year-old Sam Daly was 
set ashore at New Orleans with only sixty cents between 
him and starvation. He spent thirty cents for a pet 
alligator to keep him company, but could not think up a 
name for him. So he called him ' ' George, ' ' which was, 
as he said, "the best I could do ... as I didn't know 
no alligator names. It 's mighty hard to name an alli- 
gator, because they don't take after anything." 

Samuel Butler of Erewhon found it hard to name even 
more familiar pets, for he says in his "Notebook" : 

They say the test of literary power is whether a man 
can write an inscription. I say, "Can he name a kit- 
ten ? ' ' And by this test I am condemned, for I cannot. 

Try suggesting to a child a name for her doll and you 
will find that she has already very definite ideas of what 
is suitable. 

I once asked a friend of mine who was a prolific writer 
of stories and drove a dozen pseudonyms abreast if he 
was ever at a loss for an idea. He said, "Sometimes, 
but not for long," and he told me that once when he 
sat down at his typewriter he could not think of a thing. 
As he gazed idly out of the window his eye was caught 
by the glint of a gilded dome, and he wondered if it 
were real gold. If so it must be thicker than gold leaf 
or it would soon tarnish. But on the other hand if the 
plates are thick they might be stolen. But how could 
they be, in sight of the whole city ? Here was a problem 
and therefore a plot. So he wrote his story about how 



A NOVELISTS NOTEBOOK 115 

such a theft was accomplished and how it was discovered. 
In a fertile mind the germ of an idea expands and grows 
spontaneously. 

To find out how a rapid-fire fictionist gets his plots 
and personalities I wrote to George Allan England to 
explain his methods, which he did with great frankness 
in " The Independent ' ' of March 27, 1913, as the follow- 
ing shows : 

:<b Davis, editor of Munsey's magazines, put the 
scenario idea into my head. That is, the concept of 
working on approved orders, along a definite plot already 
agreed on between publisher and author. True, I still 
'free-lance/ but only as a by-product. 

"The scenarios, then, came to take a definite place 
alongside the note-books and the clippings. On this 
tripodal arrangement, plus an avid observance of human 
life and nature and a habit of pounding the typewriter- 
many hours each day, Sundays included, rests the 
ever-growing work of my fiction-shop. 

[y eye is ever open, also my ear, for every bit of 
good material coming my way. Into the note-book goes 
now a bit of scenery, a face, a phrase, again some new 
idea, a plot-germ, an odd garment, a deformity, a beauty. 
For example I open the book at random and read: 

'Aug-. 21, 12. — Man on boat, dark Dago, hair gray, 
brushed back; eyes slant up, heavy lids; thick, up- 
curved lips, mustache waxed up, goatee, swarthy, hand- 
some, looks like Pan. 

' * HeTL be the villain in some still-unwritten tale.) 
"Sept. 1. Sea-view. — Dappled white and slate clouds, 
breeze, sun in dazzling shine, beach wet, black, green, 



116 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

shiny ; seaweed smells. Weed, lank and wet. Haze over 
beach. Big surf makes lather. Sea very pale green, 
running to white at top of wave. Thunder of surf, mist 
of spray, wind from surf in face. 

" (This will form part of the scene of reconciliation 
between M. and N. at some future date.) 

"Gormin'. Any God 's a mint of things to tell ye. 
Swell up on your leavin's. Make long arms. AH 
puckered up to a goolthrite. Double up the prunes! 
All of a high to go. He ain't goin' to stan' it a gret 
sight longer. Jillpoke. Hotter 'n a skunk. Patter 'n 
a settled minister, etc., etc. 

" (Local color stuff, Maine dialect.) 

1 * So much for the minutiae. My books contain a world 
of every kind of 'property/ like that at the stage- 
director's hand. No situation can arise where I can not 
find a character, scenery and dialect to fit the case. Now 
for the plots. 

" 'Where do you get your stories?' " 

"Everywhere! The writer who is alive can pick up 
stories right from the air. On trains and boats, from 
the newspapers, from the living speech of humans, from 
a thousand and one sources, good fiction can be culled. 
All you have to do is to watch for it — and grab it. And 
after years of work, the watching becomes second nature; 
you can't help it. Writers are just big tom-cats stalk- 
ing plot-rats through the attics and cellars of life, or 
sitting at incident-holes, waiting for the story-mice to 
pop out. It 's so easy ! Sometimes a chance bit of 
conversation will detonate a whole story or series of 
stories. About two years ago I took a morning walk 
with a friend. We got to speculating on what would 



ONLY 3,000 WORDS A DAY 117 

happen if all the people in the world were killed 
save two. From this germ has grown a trilogy of 
serials. 

"I don't believe in driving the machinery too hard and 
running a risk of wearing it out. After it has turned 
out three thousand words for me, I shut the shop for 
the day and go for a walk, a skate, or a run in my auto, 
which was bought with part of the proceeds of a single 
story. About once in two years I go to Europe, picking 
up still more books full of data, people, and plots. I 
find these trips pay about 200 per cent, dividends, in 
cash." 

For the benefit of those who may think that a writer 
of popular fiction must be a "low-brow" and lacking in 
literary training I may mention that Mr. England is an 
M.A. of Harvard and took the Bowdoin prize for a study 
of the influence of Petrarch on Elizabethan sonnet- 
sequences. 

All writers who write on the art of fiction urge the 
need of getting material from life. Says Walter Besant 



The materials for the novelist, in short, are not in 
the books upon the shelves, but in the men and women 
he meets with everywhere; he will find them, where 
Dickens found them, in the crowded streets, in trains, 
tramcars and omnibuses, at the shop-windows, in 
churches and chapels. . . . Humanity is like a kaleido- 
scope, which you may turn about and look into, but you 
will never get the same picture twice — it can not be 
exhausted. But it may be objected that the broad dis- 
tinctive types have been long since all used. They have 
been used, but the comfort is that they can never be used 



118 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

up, and that they may constantly be used again and 
again. 

Are there to be no more hypocrites because we have 
had Tartuffe and Pecksniff? Do you suppose that the 
old miser, the young spendthrift, the gambler, the adven- 
turer, the coquette, the drunkard, the soldier of fortune, 
are never to reappear, because they have been handled 
already ? 

I am quite sure that most men never see anything at 
all. . . . Yet it is very easy to shake people and make 
them open their eyes. Some of us remember, for in- 
stance, the time when Kingsley astonished everybody 
with his descriptions of the wonders to be seen on the 
seashore and to be fished out of every pond in the field. 
Then all the world began to poke about the seaweed and 
to catch tritons and keep water-grubs in little tanks. . . . 
At present the lesson which we need is not that the world 
is full of the most strange and wonderful creatures, all 
eating each other perpetually, but that the world is full 
of the most wonderful men and women, not one of whom 
is mean or common, but to each his own personality is 
a great and awful thing, worthy of the most serious 
study. 

Henry James also stresses the type of mind necessary 
for the writer who would put to use his experiences: 

"When the mind is imaginative — much more when it 
happens to be that of a genius — it takes to itself the 
faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the 
air into revelations. The young lady living in a village 
has only to be a damsel upon whom nothing is lost to 
make it quite unfair (as it seems to me) to declare to her 
that she shall have nothing to say about the military. 
... I remember an English novelist, a woman of genius, 
telling me that she was much commended for the im- 
pression she had managed to give in one of her tales 



CHESTERTON'S WAY 119 

of the nature and way of life of the French Protestant 
youth. She had been asked where she learned so much 
about this recondite being; she had been congratulated 
on her peculiar opportunities. These opportunities con- 
sisted in her having once, in Paris, as she ascended a 
staircase, passed an open door where, in the household 
of a pasteur, some of the young Protestants were seated 
at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a 
picture ; it lasted only a moment, but that moment was 
an experience. She had got her impression, and she 
evolved her type. . . . She was blessed with the faculty 
which when you give it an inch takes an ell, and which 
for the artist is a much greater source of strength than 
any incident of residence or place in the social scale. 

I formerly supposed — and even said in print 7 — that 
G. K. Chesterton composed his detective-stories as though 
he was playing jackstraws, by getting things in the worst 
possible tangle and then amusing himself as well as the 
reader by inventing a way out of the apparently im- 
possible inextricable situation. But in a recent maga- 
zine article 8 entitled "An Admiral Eats His Hat" 
Chesterton explains "how to write detective-stories." 
The rules he gives are interesting as showing his way 
if not the only way of plot construction : 

The point is that the explanations should come in an 
ascending series, each of them telling something and only 
the last telling everything ; but above all telling the im- 
portant thing. There is here a sort of rule that might 
really in some sense be explained like a grammatical or 
mathematical rule. Let the young murderer in fancy, 
and mystifier in fact, make up his mind first what is the 

'"Six Major Prophets," p. 144. 
•"Hearst's Magazine/' November, 1921. 



120 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

real central revelation of his story, and then break it 
up into lesser and larger parts, so to speak, putting the 
lesser at the beginning, and keep the largest to the last. 
But even the smallest revelation must reveal something 
and thus increase the desire to know everything. 

It is one of the first principles of this cheap construc- 
tive science that no new figure must appear at the end 
of the story, merely in order to end it, or even to explain 
it. The most necessary and most neglected of all rules 
is this: that the detective story is centripetal and not 
centrifugal. If the terms be too technical, I would say 
that crime is domestic and not nomadic. Or again, on 
the supposition that this educational course of mine in- 
cludes infants of earliest ages, I would say that crim- 
inality like charity should begin at home, and, what is 
even more important, should end at home. 

The thrill of revelation in a really good mystery always 
consists in finding the goods on some familiar person 
inside the house; that is, some already accepted figure 
inside a certain admitted delimitation, and as near as 
possible to the center of it. In the best cases he is 
actually in the center of it. Perhaps the finest climax 
in all criminal fiction is that in "Moonstone" in which 
the investigator, after searching patiently and in per- 
fect good faith, find that he himself is the crim- 
inal. 

If the secret involves a villain, let the villain not be 
hid in an outhouse, so to speak, but in the very heart 
of the household — a very viper on the hearth. Then, 
having decided what is really to be concealed, set about 
at once to reveal it ; that is, to decide by what segments 
and in what proportions it is to be revealed. Decide 
that at such and such a stage you can afford to divulge 
such and such a feature of the real facts, and then 
another and larger feature, and so on. For it should 
always be marching towards the light. "Which reminds 
me of another fashionable phrase, very common in 



STEVENSON'S WAY 121 

journalistic eulogies; not uncommon in chapter head- 
ings; I mean, "The plot thickens." 

Remember, on your immortal salvation, that the plot 
ought never to thicken. The clouds ought to be thinning 
all the time. But they ought to be the clouds of a 
thunderstorm, and the light come first in the form of 
lightning. 

Robert Louis Stevenson in * * A Humble Remonstrance ' ' 
says: 

Our art is occupied, and is bound to be occupied, not 
so much in making stories true as in making them 
typical ; not so much in capturing the lineaments of each 
fact, as in marshaling all of them towards a common end ; 
for the welter of impressions, all forcible but all discreet, 
which life presents, it substitutes a certain artificial series 
of impressions, all indeed most feebly represented, but 
all aiming at the same effect, all eloquent of the same 
idea, all chiming together like consonant notes in music 
or like the graduated tints in a good picture. Life is 
monstrous, illogical, abrupt, and poignant; a work of 
art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational 
flowing and emasculate. The life of man is not the sub- 
ject of novels but the inexhaustible store from which 
subjects are to be selected. 

"What the author enjoys is the free exercise of his 
creative imagination, constructing a complete and con- 
sistent edifice out of such fragments as he has chanced 
to find. What the reader enjoys is the same thing, using 
for his edifice such material as the author gives him 
supplemented by what he has in his own storehouse. 
As the author's mind works best when it has given to it 
enough and not too much primary material and just the 



122 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

sort that is most suggestive, so the reader does not want 
the whole story given to him but merely the sketch which 
he can fill in with detail and decoration to suit his taste. 
The author shows his skill in supplying only the indis- 
pensable, in knowing just how much and what can be 
left to the reader's imagination. In describing a room 
or a face the author does not make out an inventory of 
all its furniture or features but specifies only those 
salient characteristics which will enable the reader to 
reconstruct an apartment or personality sufficiently like 
the author's original conception as to serve the purpose. 

The less information the novelist gives us the better 
so long as it is enough. A story is interesting in pro- 
portion as the imagination of the reader is made to do 
the constructive work. A good story is like the outline 
pictures that were given to us when we were children 
to color from our paint-box. The author can only sketch 
the picture he would have us see ; we must give it color 
and three dimensions and movements from our own 
memories and imagination. If the author fails to supply 
enough material for us to work on the story is flat and 
meaningless to us. An allusion that is not caught is as 
annoying as a muffed ball. If the author tells us too 
much there is nothing left for us to do and the story 
sounds trite and unprofitable. That is why the story 
that thrills one person is a bore to another. It misses 
him on one side or the other. 

The more practised the reader the fewer hints the 
author has to give him. This is particularly apparent 
in the drama. The habitual theater-goer instinctively 
knows when he sees an actor toying with a savage looking 



ENOUGH IS ENOUGH 123 

paper-knife in the first act that somebody is going to be 
stabbed with it in the third act ; so he lays up the weapon 
in his subconscious mind until it shall be needed for its 
fatal purpose. But the inexperienced theater-goer is 
startled by the catastrophe and wonders where the 
weapon came from. Those who attend the motion- 
pictures constantly become marvelously skilled in the 
interpretation of pantomime. They catch instantly the 
significance of a gesture, a change of expression or a 
flash-back, while those of us who see the movies only 
occasionally miss the point and lag behind the crowd. 
Legends are less and less needed as the audiences become 
educated. The musical connoisseur detests the explana- 
tory program. Progress in literature is therefore toward 
simplicity by the elimination of details that have become 
unessential and hence an embarrassment to the reader. 
"We unconsciously fill in all necessary details in a 
description as our eyes fill up the blank space covered 
by the blind spot in our retina. The bottom half of a 
line of type may be cut off but we read the line without 
difficulty. If a letter or even a word has been left out 
of a sentence we supply the omission mentally without 
observing it unless we are proof-readers — and sometimes 
they do too. A skilful artist may leave out a finger or 
two, even an eye, without causing us any annoyance. 
A Japanese artist with a few strokes of the brush will 
give us a picture — or rather incite our imaginations to 
paint one on the almost bare paper. So too the author 
may reduce his descriptions of scenery and personal 
appearance to a few brief hints, provided he selects the 
most important. Kipling is a master hand at this ; so 



124 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

was Poe. "The Pit and the Pendulum" is one of the 
most vivid stories in the language, yet how little we are 
told of the environment and circumstances ! A good test 
of your pictorial imagination is whether you can read a 
play with any enjoyment. Are the stage-directions suffi- 
cient to give you a picture of the scene and characters 
or do you have to see the play or have the setting 
described as a novelist does it? 

But because the author thinks best to cut down descrip- 
tion to the lowest point, do not assume that he sees no 
more than he gives. No, be sure he has the complete 
picture before his mind's eye in more detail than you 
can see in it. So having the entire scene before him he 
can pick out just those particular points that will best 
serve to carry the impression of the whole over to the 
reader. If it is a room that he must convey he may 
know enough about the furniture to make out an 
auctioneer's inventory, but on sorting it over he finds 
that a base-burner, a Brussels carpet, a steel engraving 
and a black walnut what-not are sufficient to differen- 
tiate this parlor in period and place from a sixth-floor 
apartment in Riverside Drive. If the reader is familiar 
with such a room he can tell in three guesses what the 
picture is and can name four of the objects on the what- 
not. But if the story is translated into French the 
reader will know nothing but what the author tells him 
and will therefore find the story singularly bare and 
unconvincing. "What we get out of a book depends 
upon what we bring to it. 

I have said that a novelist must know much about the 
scenes he describes although he may say very little. In 



HOW TO GET PERSPECTIVE 125 

order to secure the necessary subordination of details it 
is often desirable to remove a little in time or space 
from the immediate scene in order to grasp its salient 
features as a whole and so describe them more vividly 
than can be done in their presence. Clayton Hamilton 
in "On the Trail of Stevenson " points out the interest- 
ing fact that "throughout his lifelong wanderings, 
Stevenson rarely or never attempted to describe a place 
so long as he was in it. ' ' He wrote about Scotland when 
he was in France, America, and Samoa. He wrote about 
Germany in England, about California in France, and 
about Paris on a transatlantic steamer. And he ex- 
plained why he adopted this curious custom in the essay 



Very much as a painter half -closes his eyes so that 
some salient unity may disengage itself from among the 
crowd of details, and what he sees may thus form itself 
into a whole; very much on the same principle, I may 
say, I allow a considerable lapse of time to intervene 
between any of my little journeyings and the attempt to 
chronicle them. I can not describe a thing that is before 
me at the moment, or that has been before me only a 
very little while before ; I must allow my recollections to 
get thoroughly strained free from all chaff till nothing 
be except the pure gold 9 ; allow my memory to choose 
out what is truly memorable by a process of natural 
selection ; and I piously believe that in this way I insure 
the survival of the fittest. If I make notes for future 
use, or if I am obliged to write letters during the course 
of my little excursion, I so interfere with the process that 

• If this sentence were in a freshman theme it would be marked 
by the professor of English as a triple mixed metaphor, but 
Stevenson carries it off with ces triplex. 



126 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

I can never again find out what is worthy of being pre- 
served, or what should be given in full length, what in 
torso, or what merely in profile. 

This is sound psychology in the main, but unless the 
writer is sure he is as great a genius as Stevenson he 
had better not take it literally and be too hasty in 
discarding his note-book. He must remember that 
R. L. S. had a remarkably well-trained or talented set of 
' ' brownies ' ' in his unconscious who could be relied upon 
to sort over his memories and even to supply him with 
original ideas. It was they, he says, who gave him the 
plots of "Olalla" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." 

B. £. S. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE PROBLEM OP THE PLOT 

A plot is a problem. A physical problem in the cruder 
forms of fiction such as how to get your hands free, when 
you are bound to the railroad track, before the express 
comes by. A mental problem in the modern business- 
story where you must find a way to put your stores on 
the map and beat your competitor over the way, or in 
the detective-story where you have to puzzle out whose 
foot made the bloody tracks. A moral problem in the 
" problem-play ' ' where you are called upon to decide 
whether you should tell a lie to save an enemy from a 
merited punishment or whether a woman's first duty is 
toward herself or her family. Always a problem, a 
dilemma, a forked path. 

For only when confronted with a problem is con-* * 
sciousness sufficiently aroused to take an interest. 4 Only 
when a choice is to be made is the cerebral cortex lit up 
by the electric current. Under ordinary circumstances 
the train of thought runs smoothly along the permanent 
way on its habitual track, but when there is an obstruc- 
tion or an open switch then signal-lights are displayed 
that the engineer must be on his guard. The conscious 
ego, like the weary Napoleon, leaves an order with the 
sentry at the tent door that he is not to be disturbed by 

127 



128 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

any news of victory but instantly awakened if there is 
danger and something to be done. 

We are only interested in what we are concerned in, 
personally or by proxy. The spectator is bored by the 
base-ball game unless he holds his breath as the batter 
strikes and his muscles grow tense as the runner struggles 
to make a home run. It is only when the spectator takes 
sides at the game that he is able to enjoy it fully. If 
he is of a mercenary mind and only moved by the pros- 
pects of financial loss or gain he has to bet on the game 
to get up any interest in its outcome. 

So in literature. The reader's emotional interest is 
not engaged unless he identifies himself in some measure 
with one of the characters or, as in the best literature, 
with each in turn. ' ' Put Yourself in His Place ' ' is the 
caption of one novel but the secret of all. You must 
feel yourself in the fleeing criminal or the pursuing 
detective. Especially do you take the role of hero or 
heroine. You yourself are misunderstood and perse- 
cuted and you yourself are in the end vindicated and 
triumphant. "Cinderella" or "Jack the Giant-Killer" 
are in some of their protean forms the favorite romances 
of all the seven ages. 

The motion-picture dramas, having been born free 
from the literary tradition and not yet subjected to 
literary criticism, reveal the popular psychology more 
frankly than do books or stage plays. A novel that sells 
fifty thousand copies is regarded as a success but a film 
play that does not please five million is a failure. The 
silvered screen is therefore really a big mirror that 
reflects invisible form the average opinions, tastes, and 



THE HAPPY ENDING 129 

prejudices of the audience in front of it. Here then 
the demand for the happy ending, the conventional 
standards, and characters with which one identifies one- 
self becomes imperative. The adaptation of classic 
stories to the screen leads to amusing results sometimes. 
Hawthorne's " Scarlet Letter' 7 in anything like its 
original form would not satisfy the masses even if it 
could get past the censors. So in the film version the 
minister had to marry the girl and they went away to 
England where they lived happily ever after. The story 
of Jephthah's daughter is so shocking to the modern taste 
that in the motion-pictures the daughter, while she is 
mourning with her maidens upon the mountain, is car- 
ried off by a highland chief and has no need for further 
lamentation. Other motion picture men claim credit for 
refining the crude morals of the Bible. In reply to pious 
protests against the irreverence of the portrayal of the 
sacred character of Solomon on the film the producers 
of "The Queen of Sheba" replied that on the contrary 
"we have taken the liberty of softening the impression 
conveyed in the Bible where Solomon is portrayed as a 
polygamist." Burns might approve "the wisest man 
the warl' e'er saw" because "he dearly lo'ed the lassies 
O" but the producer and the public would not stand 
for it. In this week's "Saturday Evening Post" I find 
confirmation of my point in a story, "Peter Passes," by 
Christine Jope Slade, where the shop-girl says : 



I told him why working girls loved Mary Pickford so 
— because she dressed worse than us and had a rottener 



130 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

time, and it always came out right in the end. It 's 
all that keeps us going ; the. belief that there is something 
better waiting if we can only catch up with it. 



This is the secret of the persistent popular demand 
for a happy ending. The reader has a personal interest 
in the outcome. A novel in which there is no character 
sufficiently admirable that we can identify ourselves with 
it is not pleasing to an unperverted taste. A prolonged 
course of novel reading may, however, transfer the sym- 
pathy of the reader from the characters to the author. 
He will then get his enjoyment not from the story but 
from the way it is told. Just so the inveterate theater- 
goer will take pleasure in destroying the illusion of 
reality that the playwright, actors, and producer have 
striven to establish. Instead of sympathizing with the 
weeping heroine he will admire or criticize the skill of 
the actress in dabbing glycerine on her cheeks. So, too, 
the concert-goer may become quite deaf to the message 
of the music through absorption in the manner of the 
bowing of the violinist or the breathing of the vocalist. 
Because of this tendency to shift from appreciation of 
the substance to study of the technic, editors find it 
necessary frequently to change their dramatic, musical, 
and fictional critics and employ others who have not lost 
the innocence of the eye and can still look upon the play, 
opera, or book as the un-ennuied public sees it. 

The place for the spectator is in the audience, not 
behind the scenes. The ordinary reader is not concerned 
with technics but with their result. So he can not lose 
himself in admiration of the author's English or archi- 



THE BREATH OF LIFE 131 

tectural skill if all the characters depicted are so un- 
pleasant or impossible that he can not imagine himself 
as playing their roles. He must sympathize (literally 
"feel-with") with some of them at least or else he can 
not empathize with them (literally "feel himself one of 
them"). 

An author's success therefore depends upon his sym- 
pathetic power, upon his ability to actuate his fictitious 
characters with his own vitality, to transfuse his own 
life-blood into their inanimate forms ; in short, to accom- 
plish the miracle of creation as was done by Pygmalion 
with hia Galatea, Frankenstein with his monster, Friar 
Bacon with his brazen android, Vergil with his statue, 
and Rabbi Low of Prague with his Golem. 

We can often discern the extent of the author's sym-^ 
pathies by the vitality of his characters. Sometimes a 
novel contains only one person which strikes the reader 
as real, which has been worked out from the inside as a 
good architect designs a building. Such a book is an 
autobiography disguised as fiction. In the ordinary novel 
there may be two or three characters that are convincing, 
the rest are mere lay figures, wooden in appearance and 
action, only painted canvas on a lath framework. The 
author has not taken the trouble or had the power to get 
inside them or even behind them and work them out in 
three dimensions, so they stand fiat as part of the 
scenery. Sometimes an author's sympathies are limited 
by his prejudices to a particular class, sect, or nation- 
ality. Sometimes they are sex-linked and the author 
shows insight only in depicting male or female characters. 
But a novelist like Dickens or Balzac takes a personal 



132 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

interest in every personality in his pages, whether they 
be good or bad, rich or poor, refined or vulgar. The 
casual waitress and the stranger who passes on the street 
are as much alive as the main personages. The eye of 
such a novelist is a lens with universal focus. 

In the elder days of art 
Builders wrought with greatest care 
Each minute and unseen part, 
For the gods see everywhere. 

— Longfellow. 

If the author is not interested in his characters he 
can not expect his readers to be. Their minds follow 
his. Their curiosity should traverse the same track that 
his curiosity struck out. ' ' Given such characters in such 
a situation, what would happen?'' is the question that 
the author asked himself, and the reader, arrived at the 
same point in the development of the plot, subcon- 
sciously asks the same question and then turns over the 
page to see if the author has answered it according to 
his satisfaction. If not, he takes to another author. 

Answering the question according to the reader's 
' ' satisfaction ' ' does not mean that the author must sup- 
ply the same solution as the reader has divined. Only 
in the lowest type of fiction can the reader foresee the 
end and this sort soon palls on any but mediocre minds. 
If the author can not provide a 'more ingenious denoue- 
ment than the reader, the latter has no reason for 
reading. He may sit in his easy chair and imagine his 
own romances without buying a book. 

"Keep 'em guessing" is the secret of a successful 



FAIR PLAY IN FICTION 133 

novelist or playwright. But he must play fair. The 
man who propounds a conundrum and, after every one 
in the room has guessed at it or given it up, calmly 
confesses that it has no answer is speedily made to feel 
the displeasure of the entire company. If the amateur 
sleight-of-hand performer ties the hands of two people 
together with a complicated knot and tells them to dis- 
engage themselves without touching the string, it is not 
felt as a satisfactory solution if, when they have tried 
all possible twists and turns, he whips out his pocket- 
knife and cuts the cord. 

So, too, in romance writing it is not felt as a fair 
denouement to cut the Gordian knot. The author is 
limited by the unformulated rules of the game to such 
endings as strike the reader as logical and proper. To 
take for instance the simplest form of the problem plot, 
the detective-story, the author may prove that the old 
man was killed by his favorite niece if a satisfactory 
psychological motive can be adduced for such an act. 
But the reader would rightly resent it as unfair if after 
his suspicions had been pointed in turn to the butler, 
the cook, the cook's followers, the tramp in the barn, the 
disinherited son, and the jealous wife and each had been 
proved innocent the author should explain that the fatal 
shot was really fired by. a passing stranger — not previ- 
ously introduced to the reader — who was trying out his 
rifle on a crow in a neighboring field. That is quite as 
probable a happening in real life as assassination by a 
loving niece, but it is not the proper answer to the 
reader's riddle. It is as bad as slipping in an extra x, 
an unknown quantity, in the course of solving a mathe- 



134 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

matieal problem. A golf -player has a right to complain 
if he finds that a long straight drive has landed him in 
a cup hazard, placed there to penalize the good player. 

Some novelists after they have got everything in the 
worst possible muddle get out of it by killing off the key 
character by accident or disease. This is a cheap and 
nasty way of bringing the story to an end and not what 
the reader has a right to expect, although such things 
do happen in real life. Life is illogical, but fiction, 
being the offspring of the logical mind of man, can not 
exercise the same freedom of irrationality without be- 
lying its parentage. 

When a musician sits down on a piano-stool to com- 
pose, all the keys are spread before him in equal rank. 
He can play any one he pleases. He can shut his eyes 
and stick out his forefinger and touch any key. But 
after that note has been sounded, whether by choice or 
chance, the situation is not the same. The next note, 
whichever it may be, bears some relation to the first, 
stands in simple arithmetical ratio to it. The third note 
is not free, but bound to the other two, and by the time 
the musician has struck the fourth note he has fixed the 
key and the chord. He has predetermined the tone with 
which the piece must close if it is to satisfy the sense 
of the auditor. 

The sounds are not extinguished as the wires cease 
vibrating but linger long in the mental ear and the later 
notes must be such as will combine the earlier in a satis- 
factory sequence. Our past limits and directs our 
future. The continuity of consciousness gives consist- 
ency to our conduct. The only "free thinker" is the 



THE FATALISM OF FICTION 135 

amnesic idiot, whose mind is each morning wiped clear 
of all previous impressions. On a tabula rasa one may 
write anything, bnt a palimpsest is never the same as 
pure parchment. 

When the author sits down before a blank sheet of 
paper he can write whatever he likes. Plots and per- 
sonalities are alike undetermined. But as soon as he has 
set down the title he has struck his keynote and as his 
characters begin to take form under his touch and assume 
lifelike proportions they become more intractable and 
self-willed. Though he made them he can not manage 
them. They are his creatures, yet they rush on to their 
predestined fate in spite of him. If he heads them off 
by force and attempts to drive them in some other direc- 
tion they fall dead at his touch. In so far as he has 
made them lifelike he has endowed them with a life and 
logic of their own and toward the end of the novel the 
author feels himself more a spectator than an inventor. 
He describes rather than directs what shall happen. 

In all the great dramas from iEschylus to Ibsen this 
sense of fatality is dominant. A poor writer may do 
whatever he pleases with his puppets for they are not 
real to him — or to any one else. His fictitious world is 
a chance world where anything may happen, where the 
logic of character and circumstance has no control over 
action, where the end is not involved in the beginning. 
His mind is unable to follow the link in the chain of 
causality and he sinks toward the level of the amnesic 
idiot. 

In real life only omniscience can follow all the links 
and discern all the causes, so preordination must remain 



136 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

the prerogative of divinity. We know in part and there- 
fore we can prophesy only in part. In the world of the 
imagination, which is our own creation, we have more 
foreknowledge and therefore more power. There are, 
or appear to be, many possible solutions to the same 
problem, various plausible endings to the same romance. 
The refusal of an author to make any alterations in his 
first conceptions may be due to prideful obstinacy rather 
than to conscientious consistency. The best authors have 
sometimes consented to radical changes in terminations. 
Wells altered the ending of "When the Sleeper Wakes " 
in the second edition. We must avoid the common 
mistake of taking the fiction we read too seriously, of 
accepting it blindly as a correct picture of real life. 

Something more than three thousand new novels are 
published in the English language each year. As for 
the serials and short-stories that fill the magazines and 
newspapers but do not attain the honor of cloth covers, 
no one would venture to compute their number, still less 
how many persons read them and how much time they 
spend at it. It would indeed be a profitless speculation, 
for the fundamental question is how many people believe 
the fiction they read and how much they believe it. 
Advertisements nowadays are keyed and we can tell 
exactly what influence they exert, but there is no way 
of telling what is the effect of a romance. It must have 
some effect on every reader and on some a good deal. 
One must in the reading of it give it a certain specious- 
ness of credence, otherwise we take no interest, and, 
having for a time surrendered ourselves to its preten- 
sions, it is not supposable that we erase all trace of it 



THE- FICTITIOUSNESS OF FICTION 137 

from the mind when we turn the last page. Fiction 
is designed expressly to deceive us by its semblance to 
life, and it does somewhat deceive even the most skeptical 
of us. 

In so far as we are induced to accept it subconsciously 
at its face value we are deceived by it. For fiction is 
always fictitious and much of it is also misleading as a 
guide to life. We have got past the age when we were 
misled into longing to be cow-boys or pirates; we have 
long outgrown our faith in Cooper's Indians, "an extinct 
race that never existed' ' as Mark Twain calls them. 
But no doubt we do much more foolish things nowadays 
through unwitting imitation of the people in books. 
Shaw says that "ten years of cheap reading have 
changed the English from the most stolid nation in 
Europe to the most theatrical and hysterical." What 
their conduct would be if they had devoted the decade 
to Shaw's novels and plays we do not like to imagine. 

All art necessarily consists in falsification. The artist 
must select, eliminate, distort, rearrange, reduce, and 
exaggerate in order to produce his desired effect. ' ' There 
is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness 
in the proportion, ' ' says Bacon. But this prevarication 
does no harm except in print, for literature alone of all 
the arts has any considerable influence on conduct. A 
Gothic cathedral is exaggerated as to height, but the 
tourists who admire it do not thereby add a cubit to 
their stature. Music consists of exaggerated and arti- 
ficial sound, but after hearing an opera the men do not 
talk like Fafnir and the women do not yodel like a 
valkyr — or if they do they are soon cured of it. It 



138 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

would not do our young men any harm to try to look 
more like the Apollo Belvidere, and as for the young 
women, we all know of some who would be decidedly 
improved by imitation of the Venus of Milo. 

But with novels and dramas it is different, for here 
life is presented and conduct portrayed. It is, however, 
impossible to present life in its entirety and to portray 
conduct correctly. Even if the author knew the truth 
and wished to tell it he could not. Most novelists, how- 
ever, do not know any more than any other people about 
what life is, and they often know less about what it ought 
to be. They may seem to be masters of psychology and 
profess to have a profound knowledge of human nature, 
so as to be able to foretell the actions and destiny of any 
set of characters they have introduced, but editors and 
literary executors know how thin the pretense. The 
logical ending, the inevitable outcome, is it not reached 
after the result of much perplexity and many trials, in 
which the taste of the proposed publisher and the desires 
of the hoped-for readers are influential factors? Did 
not Kipling, sure craftsman as he is, provide alternative 
endings to "The Light That Failed"? Was not Ibsen, 
the dramatist of inexorable destiny, willing to sacrifice 
Nora's finaL door-slam in order to get "The Doll's 
House ' ' upon the stage ? Imagine an astronomer send- 
ing in the following statement : 

There will be a transit of Venus across the sun's disk 
from right to left on April 29, 1913, at 4:35:2 p. m. 

Then, after a little further deliberation, adding these 
lines at the bottom of the page: 



LIFE IS NOT LOGICAL 139 

Note to the editor of the "Ephemeris": If yon think 
that will not suit the public, make it "left to right" or 
'■a.m. ; 



"The logical ending" is most to be distrusted, for life 
is not logical. The climax at the end of the play or 
novel is most unreal, for in real life it would be followed 
by an anticlimax, since there is no curtain or back cover 
to cut off the story at the most dramatic point. A truth- 
ful novel would read more like Pepys's diary than like 
a romance, for the diary has neither beginning nor end, 
plot nor system, and it tells of a real man who, unlike 
the heroes of fiction, went to sleep at night and woke 
up in the morning and ate three times a day and took 
things as they came, business and pleasure, great things 
and small, actions and emotions, as do all of us. 

Truth is stranger than fiction, they tell us when we 
object to some of the inventions of the romancers. Very 
likely, but we are not talking of probability but of 
actuality. This is the fault of the fictionist, that his 
story is plausible but real life is not. His imagination 
is limited, real life is not. The experienced novel-reader 
can guess the ending nine times out of ten when he is 
half-way through the book, but he can not guess how 
his own life is going to turn out. 

Fiction began in fairy-tales, and it has never got^ 
beyond that stage. It was never less reliable than now 
when it makes most pretension to veritism. The absurd 
codes of honor, the erratic ethics, the impossible actions, 
the incredible transformations of character, the inex- 
plicable misunderstandings, that make up the novel of 



140 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

to-day should prevent it from being taken seriously. 
Certainly anybody who attempted to behave as people 
do in the novel world would get into no end of trouble 
and deserve to. Perhaps this flood of fiction is the cause 
of much that is hard to understand and still harder to 
forgive in the conduct of our contemporaries. Those 
who live in a dream world are mere somnambulists in 
this. 

E. e. s. 



CHAPTER X 

CHARACTER-CREATION 

A trinity of gifts contributes to literary genius : first, 
the gift of style, power to evoke vision and emotion 
through verbal magic ; second, the gift of plot, to weave 
together fragments of life into an amazing adventure 
wherein incident follows incident with incomparable 
logic of chance; third, the gift of character-creation, 
power to confer the miracle of life upon phantom chil- 
dren of the mind. 

And what darling flesh-and-blood phantoms some of 
them are! Mr. Micawoer whom Dickens himself was 
wont to avoid when in a hurry ! Sir Boger de Coverley 
hunting for the proper tenor note in his chorus of bay- 
ing hounds! Viola of " Twelfth Night"! 

Who would deny them a reality much more convincing 
than that of our conventional neighbor across the street 
who is at best an animated automaton, wound up 
matutinally by his wife — or by the alarm-clock — and put 
daily through his limited number of tricks. 

Of the three gifts, plot-making, style, and character- 
creation, the last would seem to lie closest to the heart 
of life; it is most deeply rooted in the soil of instinct. 
Skill in plot-making comes with practice, with a work- 
manlike way of recording and weaving together curious 

141 



142 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

bits of information that have been washed ashore by our 
own experiences or those of our friends. Style also comes 
somewhat by art ; by saturation of oneself with the pro- 
ductions of the great craftsmen ; by the ready manipula- 
tion of idea and pen. But power to create men and 
women who walk through N the world and dominate its 
moods and color its literary gossip, whose motives stimu- 
late speculation as keen as that we bestow upon relatives, 
whose lives and deaths epitomize varied philosophies — 
well, no correspondence-school that teaches short-story 
writing in two score lessons has yet learned the secret 
of such creative vitality. 

And yet character-creation is not something deeply 
cryptic, the inalienable prerogative of novelist and 01 
playwright. All of us create characters as a matter of 
self-preservation, for what you think your neighbor is 
like is your cue as to the proper way to treat him. 

Note how you shift facial expression and posture as 
you change your conversational focus from Mr. A to 
Mrs. X. With the first you slouch, are slangy, in mental 
dishabille; with the second you mind your p's and q's, 
are keenly conscious both of unpolished shoes and un- 
polished grammar. How variously too we sign our- 
selves ; now we are ' ' yours most indifferently ' ' and now 
"yours to the end." 

Every one indulges in character-creation when he falls 
in love with the most fascinating, absolutely unique per- 
sonality in the world. Alas, when this creation of genius 
is draped upon a lay figure! 

Practical success is pretty largely determined by the 
vitality with which one creates characters and the size of 



ROOTS OF CHARACTER CREATION 143 

one 's repertory. The real problem of democracy is akin 
to that of the novelist, namely, the dramatic conception 
of the greatest possible number of personalities. The 
secret of most social conflicts is lack of power to create 
character. 

To the inflexible mind, men and women are but trees 
walking, wooden figures to be shoved about like puppets. 
The only cues available for the totally unimaginative are 
clothes — a coronet or silk hat — or professional or re- 
ligious tags. They can not recognize goodness under a 
non-union label. 

Democracy depends upon multiplicity of character- 
creations. Morality consists pretty largely in the con- 
sistency with which you are able to fashion one — your 
own. Many never succeed in conceiving even a self- 
pattern ; to the end they remain a bundle of unreconciled 
impulses. Others unify their lives with a rigidity of 
accent that is most disconcerting. There are no half- 
colors in their world. Like the mountains of the moon 
their creeds throw very black shadows. 

The roots of character-creation lie very deep. Let us 
brave for a moment the risk involved in all uncovering 
of roots. 

To dogmatize to-day concerning the number and 
nature of human instincts and emotions is to invite 
criticism from biologists and psychologists who are en- 
gaged in a resurvey of this interesting field. The unre- 
vised Freudian centers every impulse of life in the love- 
instinct ; Adler finds it in the will-to-power, the striving 
of the ego for superiority. Jung talks of a hypothetical 
energy of life, which appears at first in simple functions 



144 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

such as those of nutrition and sex but in time becomes 
highly differentiated. One finds it convenient for pur- 
poses of description to list certain action-patterns that 
center in the mental and physical functions that tend to 
preserve (1) the individual, (2) the species, and (3) the 
group. Self-preservation involves the function of nutri- 
tion, the collecting and conservation of food, the pro- 
vision of shelter, and the defense against aggression. 
Species-preservation emphasizes mating and the propa- 
gation and care of children. Group-preservation em- 
phasizes group-fighting, communication, and all sorts of 
activities centering in gregariousness. 

There are numberless complications of these basal 
activities. One may build a home for a mate, or for a 
stretch of painted canvas; the collecting impulse may 
develop into such delightful hoarding as that made mani- 
fest in the collections in a boy's pocket or a magpie's 
nest or even into the amassing of a fortune after the man- 
ner of a Hetty Green or the housing of butterflies in a 
Museum of Natural History. Play may range from a 
baby's absorbed interest in a rattle to a poet's fascinated 
manipulation of riming words. But out of such basal 
tendencies emerge the manifold patterns of individuality. 
Varying strength of different impulses and varying 
combinations of them give us our many varieties of 
personality. 

Your character as conceived by the modern psy- 
chologist is partly what you are and still more what you 
are not. To explain this apparent paradox let me state 
that the modern psychologist does not believe that strong 
impulses linger demurely in the antechamber until 



IMAGINARY COMPANIONS 145 

summoned into action. In other words instinct does not 
wait to be called ont by the environment ; it is likely to 
create its own object or to mold its environment into an 
object. This is to be kept in mind in our survey of cer- 
tain situations in life analogous to those found in literary 
work. Remember a mental creation may be a replica 
of something we have, or of something we have not but 
wish to have, and that most of our wishes and com- 
pensatory fantasies center in the patterns that make for 
self-preservation, species-preservation, or gregariousness. 

There are many situations in life in which we may 
seek analogies for literary creation of character. Study 
of them will show how creative human needs are. Let 
us consider, in particular: (1) The imaginary com- 
panions of childhood; (2) the ideal of adolescence; (3) 
dual personalities. 

The imaginary playmate is one of the most charming 
fantasies of childhood; the delightful whimsy so mani- 
fested must not blind us to its real import. Obviously, 
in many cases, the make-believe companion is to compen- 
sate for something that is lacking in the child's sur- 
roundings. It gratifies an instinctive prompting; it is 
the creation by a racial impulse of an object upon which 
to expend itself. This fact has been recognized in the 
common notion that the imaginary companion develops 
in the life of the lonely child and is the outcome of his 
effort to compensate for his loneliness. This explanation 
is true so far as it goes but it doesn't go far enough. 
There are many varied impulses so embodied. Some- 
times the companion is an ideal for imitation, one of 
golden tresses or golden motives; sometimes a hunch- 



146 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

backed, bewhiskered old man of a conscience ; sometimes 
a whipping-boy to take one's punishments; or a most 
delectable baby to be mothered at will. 

Let us inspect a few reports, given me by students. 

The first case to be cited is charmingly nonchalant. 
This imagined character served a very utilitarian pur- 
pose. His name was Old-Man-Milk-the-Cow and his 
creator was only four. 

The only instance I can remember definitely was when 
poor Old-Man-Milk-the-Cow died and I loaded him on the 
hay- wagon with a pitchfork and, driving to the top of a 
sand-hill a few miles away, threw him off in the sand, 
and came away. 

Here is another report in which the companioning 
element is more evident: 

I can see her now as she used to look, dressed in a 
black and white checkered apron. I called her Eeaken. 
I don't remember her face because she always wore a 
sunbonnet. Whenever I think of her I see her golden 
curls peeping just out from beneath the edge of her 
bonnet. She came oftenest in the springtime, when the 
first daisies and buttercups were coming in the meadow. 
I saw her only once in a great 'while but I talked to her 
often. 

The imaginary companion may be invoked to give one 
a feeling of security. One timid little girl had as a 
companion a woman . . . 

about five feet three inches tall, with large brown eyes 
and very dark hair. She always dressed in black and 
wore a white apron and large comb in the back of her 



THE BLUE-BIRD 147 

hair. We had a large orchard and a small path ran 
through it. Whenever I wanted to talk with her she 
would walk slowly up this path until she was directly 
in front of me and then she would stop. Whenever I 
turned to go anywhere she would fall in behind me and 
walk slowly after me. I was never afraid because I 
felt this lady would protect me. I hated to start to 
school because I thought I could n't have my companion 
with me. For a time I walked a short distance behind 
my brother so she could walk with me. 

Sometimes the imaginary companion is all that one 
would like to be. "Very tall and beautiful, with golden 
curls, not fat and freckled as I was." 

Sometimes the companion is a little sister, to be 
mothered at will, sometimes an older sister to take care 
of one, sometimes a twin brother or sister, a duplicate 
of oneself. 

Sometimes the«companion is not a human being. One 
girl reports : 

I have always had a companion. If I am happy it is 
a bluebird on my shoulder on a bright golden thread 
that I hold in my hand. If blue and friendless, my 
companion is a snow-white bird listening to my tale of 
woe. Sometimes the companion is a beautiful black 
horse on which I am sure of making my escape. After 
the death of a black sheep-dog that had companioned me 
for a number of years, my companion became a black 
dog indistinct in outline but never leaving me. 

Other reports bring still other motives. There is the 
work-fairy carried in the apron-pocket and summoned 
out to help in disagreeable tasks ; Uncle Sam, the imag- 
inary companion of the little boy of the Indian reserva- 



148 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

tion; "My folks in Kansas City," imaginary relatives 
with which to threaten less accommodating members of 
the family; moving-picture people who have conde- 
scended to walk off the screen. Most thrilling of all, a 
train of cars as a playmate ! Think of taking your daily 
walk followed by a snorting and sportive locomotive ! 

Not always, however, is the companion visible. It 
may be a disembodied voice, so to speak, communicated 
with via the telephone. Thus the impulse for prolonged 
conversation may find gratification without being blocked 
by a cold-hearted exchange or a hurried neighbor. 

And upon these children of fantasy are bestowed 
quaint names or realistic ones : Nonnie or Kangaroo, Salt 
Nellie or Sarah Stay-a-While ! 

The following account of an imagination-world and 
imaginary characters, sent me by Dr. Preston Slosson of 
the University of Michigan, is of especial interest to the 
psychologist of literature because of the period covered, 
more than ten years, and the care with which the origin 
of the names and the development of the ideas is traced. 
Doubtless many stories and poems have germinated from 
such childhood creations: 

"When only four or five years old P. S. had invented 
an imaginary companion named Mona. Whether the 
name was a pure product of fantasy or caught by some 
chance overhearing (there is an island of that name on 
old maps) he does not know. His brother A. S. had at 
the same time an imaginary companion named Ingast. 
In neither case was there an identification of the person 
with the child himself. 

When about six years old P. S. was seized with a pas- 
sion for astronomy and geography. This led to the defi- 



MONA AND INGAST 149 

nite localization of Mona. He became a war-chief and 
life-president of a small tribe of hardy warriors on the 
planet Saturn. P. S. himself was one of the comrades 
of Mona, usually the second in command. (It is worth 
noting, as pointing perhaps to some lack of ambitiousness 
or aggressiveness on the part of P. S., that even in day- 
dream worlds he figured always as an important per- 
sonage but not as the ruler or commander. P. S. was 
always the hero's friend but not the hero himself.) 
Saturn was a desolate, cold, and barren planet. P. S. 
drew maps of it in which most of the area was given over 
to mountains and to icy or granite-covered plain. This 
was partly the influence of environment (P. S. then 
living in Wyoming), partly the influence of statements 
in the astronomy book, and partly the desire to give 
the Saturnians much opportunity for hardy adven- 
ture. 

A. S. in the meantime chose Jupiter as his planet. It 
is worth noting that the two dream-worlds of the two 
loving brothers had nothing in common, though the game 
of " planets" was played in each other's company. The 
Jovians of A. S. 's world did not come into touch with 
the Saturnians of P. S. 's world. Each group had its own 
enemies and fought its own wars ; as regards each other 
they were neutrals. Both groups wore granite armor 
covered with steel wire (of all uncomfortable clothing!) 
but their helmets were of different design ; those of A. S. 
being more artistic. P. S. had as totem animal, the 
tiger (in later years the kingbird) ; A. S. always the lion. 
P. S. had a blue flag ; A. S. a red. 

The planetary "saga" was always one of war, inter- 
mingled with some explorations. Both guns and swords 
were used and airships of all types. The enemies were 
always unspeakably cruel and were usually far more 
numerous than the war-band of the hero. Usually they 
were dark in complexion. (P. S. was brunette, A. S. 
blond, but villains are always brunettes in romantic tra- 



150 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

dition, at least before the war with Germany, so that 
perhaps hardly signifies.) 

A. S. died at the age of six. His imagination was far 
more vivid and fertile than that of his elder brother 
but what it would have developed into can never be 
known. 

P. S. continued his game of "planets"; usually alone, 
sometimes with any other youngster who played with toy 
soldiers. The game remained substantially an epic of 
war. Two changes were made in the game as played by 
P. S. Mona dropped into the background and was re- 
placed by another saga hero named Ahfahcah or Afaka. 
No explanation of this name can P. S. hit on. Mona 
was remembered as a hero of times past, killed in ancient 
wars, and thus a certain continuity was kept to the saga. 
The country of the hero was given a definite shape 
instead of being spread all over the planet Saturn. The 
new country of Saturnia was modeled on South America 
in form but was many times vaster in area and more 
mountainous. Instead of the tiny war-band of a few 
hundred which figured in the earlier form of the legend, 
there was a population of a billion. 

By the time P. S. was ten or twelve years old the wild 
poetry of the earlier imaginations had been stereotyped 
into a more definite and systematic form. Saturnia was 
a constitutional republic divided into a dozen States 
(all shown on maps and all given names, some purely 
fanciful and some — such as ' ' Colrad ' ' from ' ' Colorado ' ' 
— derived from real words). There were two political 
parties, with one of which the hero was identified. P. S. 
himself was always of the same party. Political contests 
within the country supplemented the monotony of 
foreign wars. But foreign wars continued. Enemy 
nations, known at different times as Uranians (from the 
planet Uranus), Nevdians (from the State of Nevada), 
Creels (name uncertain, perhaps from "cruel"), and 
Niffelheimers (from Norse mythology), continually in- 



THE SATURNIAN SAGA 151 

vaded the country and were beaten back after heroic 
wars. The campaigns were worked out with lead soldiers 
or by maps on paper. The enemy were as before 
numerous, cruel v and brunette. They were invariably 
the invaders and their cause was always unjust. They 
were always defeated in the end but only after years 
of struggle and many initial successes. The Saturnians 
were led to battle by successive generals, Ahfahcah, Cur- 
til, and Agatha. Also by P. S. himself, sometimes in his 
own (earthly) name and sometimes disguised by such 
ncrnis de guerre as Brahge (from Norse mythology). 
The national flag was white with a blue border; the 
enemy's flag was purple and gold. 

Saturnia also developed in peaceful lines with " lan- 
guage, institutions, and laws." It had railroads, the 
chief line being the "Western Limited"; also an air 
service. Mountains and forests predominated rather 
than farm lands or big cities, but the billion inhabitants 
were very prosperous and, save in war-time, lived com- 
fortably. They had many inventions unknown in this 
world, and mysterious sources of power. Great build- 
ings, such as the universities and the national capitol, 
covered a square mile apiece, in grand, gloomy, imposing 
Romanesque style. There was much fine scenery, with 
mountains ten miles high and rivers ten miles broad. 
The "strendir" (strand-deer?) lurked in the forests, a 
white-coated mastodon with tiger's claws, and hunting 
was a favorite sport, though second to war and aviation 
and the exploration of new lands. 

This carries the story down to adolescence. When 
P. S. was about seventeen the country of Saturnia was 
rechristened Gladheim (from Norse mythology) and de- 
liberately developed into a Utopian country with perfect 
institutions. With this change we pass from the un- 
bidden imaginings of childhood to the deliberate crea- 
tions of the imaginative intellect and it is therefore un- 
profitable to follow the further development of the saga, 



152 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

save to note that some of the old place and person names 
were carried over into the new Utopian commonwealth, 
and that the old tradition of being armed for defensive 
warfare against materially superior though morally in- 
ferior enemies was maintained. Probably the "moral- 
ization ' ' of the saga, turning the country which had once 
been just a dream-country into a Utopia or ideal country, 
may be counted as typical of the transition from the 
child to the adult. 

The relation of the imaginary companion to native 
tendencies is very obvious in these reports. Sometimes 
the instinct dramatized is the need to be companioned 
by a contemporary of one's own, or the desire for an 
exclusive affection with its accompanying jealousy of 
possession, or the longing for appreciation or the sense 
of personal deficiency. Sometimes the instinct for 
leadership is in evidence ; sometimes the instinct of fear. 

And the days of the imaginary companion appear to be 
numbered by the development of instinct. 

Whimsical indeed are some of the circumstances at- 
tending its departure from this mundane sphere. I 
myself one day sat down unwarily in an armchair 
seemingly unoccupied, to the great dismay of a little 
sister who cried out in sorrow that I had killed ' ' Jenny, ' ' 
a form of psychical murder that quite ruffled my com- 
posure and aroused sad memories of other imaginary 
characters slain by the critic settling down in his arm- 
chair ! 

Matrimony, too, may have an annihilating effect as 
appears from the report of a little girl whose companion 
answered to the euphonious name of Susan Doozenberry. 



SUSAN DOOZENBERRY 153 

"One day my mother read in the paper that Miss 
Doozenberry was married. 1 knew it must be Susan and 
I felt very badly," No longer, it seemed, could Susan 
attend to the strenuous duties of companioning a little 
girl. 

Often the make-believe companion vanishes when the 
child goes to school and becomes one of a social group. 
The erstwhile comrade is forgotten as naturally as we 
forget other friends of other days. Sometimes, though, 
one is greeted by the old friend in an unexpected fashion. 
Thus George came home beaming from his first day of 
school. The shadowy Mary of his dream-life sat just 
across the aisle from him! 

This communicativeness of the small George concern- 
ing his make-believe companion is somewhat exceptional. 
Most children maintain a great reserve and are thus 
driven to many subterfuges to have their way in enter- 
taining their small guests without the knowledge of 
grown-ups. As for example the youngster who always 
crowded her flesh-and-blood neighbor on the buggy-seat 
in order to make room on the outside for the intimate 
friend of her inner life. 

For many children the imaginary companion is a 
fixed and constant creation, an expression of an un- 
varying and fairly simple emotional need, often pro- 
jected into a curiously realistic and unchanging figure 
clearly imaged in all details even to shoe-lace and hair- 
ribbon. 

But there are other children whose creations are as 
numerous as their varying moods and alternating emo- 
tions. To-day they may be conscience- or fear-smitten 



154 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

and worship the saint of unswerving holiness, but to- 
morrow the zest for adventure is warm in their blood 
and they are questing far, companioned by a conscience- 
less pirate. The Fair One with the Golden Locks may 
lure them into fairy-land or the Imps of the Night 
beckon them into forbidden places. 

"I am certain, " writes a woman of the story-making 
temperament, ' ' that if all of my imaginary companions 
could be gathered into one group, there would be enough 
to start a good-sized village, and if each one could be 
placed in the surroundings in which as a childhood 
companion she lived, this idealized village would present 
a chaos of architectural and landscape effects of startling 
grotesqueness. ' ' 

And it is, one conjectures, the children of such ver- 
satile needs, responsive to a rich and complex instinctive 
and emotional life who develop capacity for character- 
creation in life and literature. The stronger the bio- 
logic hunger, the more insistent the demand for grati- 
fication in some form of embodiment. 

The ideals and dream-companions of the adolescent 
boy or girl are very largely variations on the same theme 
as that exemplified by the imaginary playmate. But 
they frequently take a more objective form and have 
social significance. 

A story-book character or a great historic character 
or an individual in the youth's environment may become 
his pattern for imitation. Self-identification with those 
in our environment who are what we would be or possess 
what we lack is a well-nigh universal feature of the im- 
pulsive life. The significance, in understanding charac- 



IMAGINARY SWEETHEARTS 155 

ter, of knowing with whom the individual most readily 
identifies himself is recognized in work with patients 
suffering from mental disturbances, and physicians have 
coined the term "emphatic index' ' to "designate the 
person chosen as the ideal.' ' Among male patients 
Napoleon is by far the favored character, testifying to 
the deep-seated will-to-power, pathetically evident in 
those who fall by the way. 

But the love-motif, evident even in many child reports, 
dominates the companion-making tendency of adoles- 
cence. In a few confidential reports the development of 
the imaginary companion has been traced from child- 
hood through adolescence into maturity. The character- 
creativeness of the love-life may be as simply motivated 
as that of childhood. 

It is an outgrowth of many instincts, not that of sex 
only. The desire for appreciation, to be understood, to 
be protected, reappear. Love may seek a duplicate of 
oneself or an idealized personality. Sometimes the ideal 
love is a complex synthesis of extraordinary complexity ; 
the crystallization of the ideals, the aspirations, the phil- 
osophy of years ; an embodiment in another personality 
of the mysteries of life and eternity. Chateaubriand 
writes : 

The ardor of my imagination, my timidity, my lone- 
liness drove me to retreat within myself ; because of the 
failure of a real object I invoked, by power of my vague 
desire, a phantom who never left me — I created a woman 
from all the women that I had seen. This charmer fol- 
lowed me everywhere, invisible. I amused myself with 
her as with a real being ; she varied at whim of my mad- 
ness. Pygmalion was less in love with his statue. 



156 PLOTS AND PEESONALITIES 

How often does love in anticipation project its ideal 
in an imaginal embodiment ? We have no material upon 
which to answer this question. Those realistic projec- 
tions, almost hallucinatory of childhood, sometimes 
visual, sometimes auditory, may or may not be duplicated 
in the imaginations of the dreaming lover. The influence 
of eye-mindedness or ear-mindedness upon choice of a 
sweetheart has not yet been determined. 

But if we may trust the novelist, lovers as well as 
children may visualize their ideals. 

"I always thought you were tall," exclaims the 
Gentleman from Indiana on first meeting the little lady 
of his dreams and recognizing her by her gold-brown 
hair, her gray eyes, and "short upper lip like a curled 
rose-leaf. ' ' 

The character-creations of mythology and of primitive 
religions exemplify from another side the companion- 
making tendency of the childlike mind. In one sense 
God must always be conceived as the Imaginary Com- 
panion, a fulfilment of the unsatisfied desires, the One 
Who Understands. 

Says Arnold Bennett in writing of the author's craft: 
"First-class fiction is, and must be, in the final resort, 
^autobiographical." And, again: "The foundation of 
his [the novelist's] equipment is universal sympathy. 
And the result of this (or the cause — I don't know 
which) is that in his own individuality there is some- 
thing of everybody." 

The modern student of human nature would probably 
accept Arnold Bennett's second alternative and explain 



THE THREE MISS BEAUCHAMPS 157 

universal sympathy as due to the manifold nature of the 
fictionist. This leads us to a discussion of the dramatic 
instability that so frequently characterizes the creator 
of characters. 

In such instances there is no mere embodiment of an 
object to satisfy a particular desire or to compensate for 
a given inadequacy in life, but a dramatization by the 
self of the personality. One becomes other than oneself. 
This character is created from within. When projected, 
such realization constitutes a very real form of character- 
creation. 

The most spectacular form in which human instability 
reveals itself is that of the dissociated personality. 

Dr. Prince, in a book much more fascinating than 
most novels, "The Dissociation of a Personality," has 
acquainted us with the various personalities that so- 
journed in one individual. In the firm he investigated 
— all tenants of one body — there resided at least three 
individualities : Miss Beauchamp, conscientious, reserved, 
studious, called by her physician ' i the saint ' ' ; Sally, im- 
pudent and imprudent, a fascinating imp of a child, ' ' the 
sinner" ; and Miss B., a normal amalgamate of saint and 
sinner, named by Dr. Prince, ' ' the woman. ' ' 

Dissociated or split-off personalities are a very rare 
occurrence; we cite them only to introduce by an ex- 
treme example something that all of us experience, 
namely, fluctuations in mood or interest so extreme as 
to give a different color to the pattern that as an indi- 
vidual we present to the world. 

Definite mental sets crystallize in different habits of 



158 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

reaction. One's mental set as a shrewd business man 
permits one to do things that one's churchly "set" would 
look at askance. 

Very significant are these "mental sets" of ours, these 
diverse patterns of reaction which, like our garments, we 
change to harmonize with the occasion. As a matter of 
fact, clothes are a sort of symbol of change of "temper"; 
and one finds it difficult to keep the hospital-set of mind 
while wearing a conventional evening-gown, or the 
striker's attitude in a dress-suit. In Arthur Somers 
Roche's story clothes changed "The Dummy Chucker" 
into a gentleman. Varied interests precipitate varied 
personalities : father of a family, leading preacher, base- 
ball fan, teller of big-fish stories — all may coexist in one 
individual without much conflict. Yet conflicts between 
interests arise on sundry occasion. The clergyman's 
conscience may interfere with his embellishment of his 
best story or his enjoyment of a Sunday game. It is 
only the narrow and inflexible individual of one mental 
set who is never hesitant as to what course of action to 
pursue, what mental set to give free rein to. 

Varied interest is not the only cause of mild splits in 
personality. Variation in mood is quite as potent. In 
one 's hours of melancholy there is a complete shift from 
the rosy-hued anticipations that lured one on when the 
sky of the mind was blue and sunny. No wonder our 
acquaintances find us incalculable ! We have doffed our 
smile and donned a sour cast of countenance. 

To preserve a certain stability of reaction so that our 
friends and foes may know what to depend upon, we 
adopt all sorts of manners and conventionalities and we 



THE MASK OF THE PEN-NAME 159 

economize on aliases. But the multiple selves of us, not 
to be denied, seek egress in a hundred ways. They 
adopt a continual masquerade to get away from the 
straight-laced notion of us that our relatives cherish. 
The so-called temperamental type of person abounds in 
inconsistencies. But probably he is never as incon- 
sistent as he would like to be. As story-writer and 
novelist he may, however, enlarge the field of his activi- 
ties, become as many individuals as he has capacity to be. 

There are many devices current by which the self may 
shunt itself, as it were, to another circuit. Take, for 
example, the pet-name ; or since we are interested in the 
story-writer, the pen-name. This is a device for throw- 
ing off inhibitions, for freeing the deeper impulses of the 
personality. Says a writer in the "Dial": It enhances 
"the ease and freedom and un-self -consciousness which 
a writer is at liberty to enjoy when he gives expression 
to his thought or invention, his whim or his fancy, with- 
out being saddled by that Old Man of the Sea, his own 
personality in the form of an irrevocably unalterable 
name, with all that name has come to stand for in his 
own mind, in the mind of others, and in the mind of 
that supreme intelligence that knows him for what he 
really is. To objectify or dramatize oneself before put- 
ting pen to paper seems to promote a freer flow of words, 
to bring a richer supply of images, to fertilize the in- 
vention and stimulate the fancy." 

It is not ours to choose the family name, with all that 
it implies of traditional traits and limitations. We are 
not even granted the privilege of choosing our given 
name, which often represents a parent's compensatory 



160 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

make-believe, as when we are called Rex or Venus. We 
are not allowed to nickname ourselves but must submit 
to our playmates' reading of our strange aspirations or 
stranger physiognomy. But when we write tales we put 
on at will our magic mantle, the assumed name. 

Some of the famous pen-names of literature have come 
to stand for very distinct character-patterns, quite dif- 
ferent from that of the workaday writer. Under shelter 
of his darling alias the novelist has spun plots and 
coquetted with dream-friends who would refuse him even 
a bowing acquaintance while cumbered by his original 
patronymic. Think, for example, of the White Rabbit 
and the tearful Mock Turtle ever daring to confide in 
Dodgson, the mathematician! Lewis Carroll was an- 
other matter. 

William Sharp, penetrating critic, could not write 
"From the Heart of a Woman"; that wonderful 
achievement was reserved for the woman-part of him 
whom he named "Fiona McCleod." Very close to 
duality of personality do we come in Sharp's case. 

In a sense, Sharp's Fiona personality simply repre- 
sented an emotional complex. He explained to a friend, 
"I can write out of my heart in a way I could not do 
as William Sharp, and indeed as I could not do if I 
were the woman whom Fiona McCleod is supposed to be, 
unless veiled in scrupulous anonymity." And again, 
"Should that secret be found out, Fiona dies." 

But in another passage, taken from a letter to his wife, 
a different tone prevails. "There is something of a 
strange excitement in the knowledge that two people 
are here, so intimate and yet so far off. For it is with 



THE MYSTERY OF FIONA 161 

me as though Fiona were asleep in another room. I 
catch myself listening for her step sometimes, for the 
sudden opening of a door. It is unawaredly that she 
whispers to me. I am eager to see what she will do — 
particularly in 'The Mountain Lovers.' It seems pass- 
ing strange to be here with her alone at last. . . . " 

Sharp lived doubly, a twofold emotional life that was 
perchance just on the border-land of the pathological, 
though it would be a venturesome person who would dare 
to tell us how many of Sharp's quaint references to 
Fiona are allegorical, how many are literal in intent. 
From true duality of personality to such an emotional 
complex as that of Fiona is but a step ; perhaps one step 
more in another direction carries us to character-creation 
in general. 

Our greatest creators of character seem indeed to be 
somewhat at the mercy of their children as though the 
latter had an independence of their own. Dickens's 
characters had a delightful way of assuming objectivity, 
lifelikeness, and had their whims. Mrs. Gamp, for ex- 
ample, spoke to him only in church. While we find little 
evidence of real dissociation in the literary genius, we 
are continually running upon manifestations of non- 
conscious activity. In fact we find so much evidence of 
such activity in the creative mind that we are ready to 
assert that creativeness is certainly fertilized by 
submissiveness to the guidance of non-conscious fac- 
tors. 

In conclusion, let us review the two possible types of 
character-creation : those created from within by a dra- 
matization and projection of one aspect of the self; and 



162 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

those fitly described as fantasies to compensate the 
creator for an inadequacy in his own life. 

The women characters of men novelists and the men 
characters of the woman writer show this distinction in 
clear-cut fashion. The masculine writer may create a 
woman who would satisfy certain needs of his own, a 
beautiful creature possessed of all feminine charms or a 
comfortable housewife whose proper setting is in the 
kitchen or at the head of a table. The woman writer 
idealizes a protector properly armed with a saber, a 
machine-gun, or a bank-book. Such embodiments of 
instinctive demands are like the imaginary companions 
of childhood, fairly simple personalities embellished with 
graces by a practised hand or left as wooden figures to 
be finished by appropriate costumes. Matrimony may 
banish such fantasies. 

The adored mother, rather than the lady-love, may be 
the dominant woman of a novelist 's tales. Read Barrie 's 
delicious chapter on "My Heroine" in "Margaret 
Ogilvy." Hear the chuckle with which his mother 
greets the heroine in each of her son 's books. ' ' He tries 
to keep me out, but he canna.' , 

Says the son, "She was not meant to be you when I 
began, Mother; what a way you have of coming creeping 
in!" 

Characters created dramatically from within are much 
more complex. They too represent a cleavage along in- 
stinctive lines, but the writer becomes in a sense his own 
character. The heroine of the great novelist is no 
longer the man's ideal of what a woman should be or 
the negative of such virtues ; she is the expression of the 



THE INSTABILITY OF GENIUS 163 

man's participation in a dual nature. The great women 
characters of literature are as definitely bisexual as their 
creators; Portia, the masterful and the alluring; Cor- 
delia, the truthful and the tenderly maternal. 

Real personalities blossom in the experience of fluid- 
minded children like Sentimental Tommy, whose myriad 
dramatizations are in high contrast to GrizeVs pathetic 
vision of herself grown to be a "good woman." 

The high degree of instability characterizing myriad- 
mooded personalities may have tragic consequences; it 
may issue in inability to maintain any center of personal 
equilibrium. The creative genius pays highly for his 
gift. 

He who lives more lives than one, 
More deaths than one must die. 

J. B. D. 



CHAPTER XI 

PLOT-MAKING AS A SAFETY-VALVE 

Just as imaginary companions come into being because 
of the failure of life to satisfy the deep-seated desires 
of the individual, so fictitious events are fabricated to 
gratify our love of adventure or of beneficent or despotic 
power or to compensate for our social insignificance or 
our timidity or our stupidity. 

Compensatory make-believe is nature 's great prescrip- 
tion for the thwarted self. It takes many forms, such 
as play, day-dreaming, lying, gossip. 

In a charming article on ' ' The Compensatory Function 
of Make-Believe Play," Professor Robinson lists the facts 
both within and without which keep the child from 
satisfying his desires. He writes : 

He may want to hunt. Perhaps the family cat sup- 
plies him with a stimulus to make this impulse felt. 
But this hunting impulse has become a particularized 
affair. Hunting is shooting, and he can not shoot be- 
cause he has no gun. Instead of ignoring a stimulus to 
which he can not react adequately, he points a stick at 
the cat and shouts ' ' Boom ! " He may then, and perhaps 
to his sorrow, try to drag in his "dead" game by the 
hind legs. 

By means of his pretensions the child is compensating 
for the inadequacies of the situation. Or his own 

164 



COMPENSATORY MAKE-BELIEVE 165 

"complex little nature' ' may interfere with his enjoy- 
ment. 

For the pure joy of it he would at times like to bring 
down a stout club upon the head of his playmate ; that is, 
he would like to do this if it were not for the discon- 
certing facts that he would not like to hear his play- 
mate cry in pain, and that he would not like to feel the 
blows of his playmate's revenge. And so the two boys 
will play at fighting. 

And again: 

Children are constantly recognizing inconsistencies in 
their play-life and trying to patch them over as best they 
can. When, as a very small boy, I played with tin sol- 
diers and miniature locomotives, I always felt the in- 
appropriateness of the size of my own body. The device 
which I hit upon to get around this difficulty I called 
playing you are nothing. Every playfellow who entered 
into the world of my tiny armies and railroads was 
introduced to the proposition of suspending all interest 
in his own body. The running of the trains and the 
marching of the troops were to be considered as events 
independent of ourselves. There was one youngster who 
could not push a locomotive across the floor without 
playing he was the engineer. His fate was obvious. I 
never invited him to play unless I could get no one else, 
and when he did come it was to be made miserable 
by my constant insistence that he must play he was 
nothing. 

The psychoanalyst has convinced many of us that 
night-dreams reveal suppressed wishes. We refrain 
nowadays from confessing our dreams at the breakfast- 
table, which is so much on the credit side of the psycho- 



166 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

analyst ! Day-dreams are also a revelation of our heart's 
desires, which may however be perfectly respectable. 

A recent writer on dreams suggests that the amount 
of sleep we need each night is determined by the num- 
ber of suppressed wishes we have to gratify and that 
successful men like Edison sleep little because their 
waking hours are so satisfying. One may take this with 
several grains of salt. But it is true that day-dreaming 
is the more indulged in the greater the need for com- 
pensation for a dull life. A young girl writes a descrip- 
tion of the imaginary world in which she lives. It is a 
lovely one of blooming rose-gardens and green lawns. 
Her realistic description leads to the comment, "How 
beautiful your home-town must be!" Her home-town 
beautiful? A barren mining-camp where a blade of 
yellow grass is an event ; a tree, a miracle ; and a flower 
unimaginable ! 

The ill-fed children of the slums attend in their hours 
of reverie sumptuous banquets ; so does the convalescent 
kept on light diet. The hero and heroine of Wells's 
novel "Marriage" when reduced to meager rations find 
themselves occupied in constructing elaborate menus in- 
stead of the profound philosophies of life for the sake of 
which they had isolated themselves for a winter in 
Labrador. 

Snubbed by society we wear the ermine and crown in 
our private fantasies and turn an insolent eye upon our 
kneeling courtiers. Or if very young we enjoy the 
fantasy of the adopted child and devise a thrilling 
climax with the advent of the royal parents. 

In the "Little Boy's Utopia" which Margaret Wilson 



DAY-DREAMS 167 

has reported so delightfully, "the milk- jug is always 
full ; you can keep pouring out and pouring out and it 
never gets empty. . . . You can slip your dinner under 
and the appetite stays on top." Best of all in this 
Utopia, time does n 't go away. * * It 's time all the time. ' ' 

Day-dreams may stimulate achievement. The little 
girl who longs for great braids of hair falling below her 
waist may turn to flaxen strands of rope ; she may bor- 
row her mother's carpet-rags and rival an up-to-date 
belle with her tinted tresses. She may even wield the 
hair-brush the magic one hundred times night and 
morning. 

The small boy day-dreaming of gigantic stature of 
mind and body mounts the highest pair of stilts he can 
find or rejects the proffered cigarette. The youth 
visioning fame sharpens his pencil and puts a finer 
point on his daily theme. 

But the dreamer who uses his dream as an excuse to 
avoid contact with reality and the discipline that comes 
from bumping into life itself is in a bad way. Such 
day-dreaming is a form of shell-shock ; it is a flight from 
reality, moral cowardice. It is not enough to dream. 
One must make one's dreams come true in life — or 
literature. 

In two somewhat disconcerting forms private fan- 
tasies intrude upon real life. I refer to the lie and to 
gossip. 

The child's lie that grows out of his make-believe 
propensity may express also the child's deep-seated long- 
ing to gain recognition for his private fantasy. The 
social impulse in us all leads to a desire to have our 



168 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

faiths shared. How much more real seems the imaginary 
lion we spoke of so casually when our playmate begins 
to question us concerning the length of its mane or the 
depth of its growl ! (Particularly delightful are group 
fantasies: Santa Claus, for example, or the Easter 
Rabbit.) 

Another's faith in our make-believe is a long step 
toward actualizing our dreams, and as children we some- 
times put them in words and try them out on grown-up 
folks — usually, of course, with explosive and yet benevo- 
lent results. We adjust ourselves to a bigger reality at 
cost of a fiction or two. But the dynamiting of castles 
in Spain should unquestionably be entrusted to very 
gentle anarchists. 

Life itself in the form of parent, teacher, or playmate 
criticizes so successfully the lies of fantasy that most 
children soon make the distinction between the inner 
world where extravaganzas may be staged at will, and 
the outer world to whose whims one must conform if one 
would be socially comfortable. In fact, so thoroughly do 
most children and adults accept the social censor of 
their dramas that a confident liar is rarely met with. 
Nearly always the skilful psychologist is able to trace 
his deception through change in breathing, in color, or 
in fluency of speech. 

So uncommon, in fact, is the successful liar that he is 
spoken of as pathological and labeled mentally dis- 
turbed. The pathological liar, be it remembered, differs 
from the ordinary sort in that his fabrications have no 
simple common-sense explanation, as a desire to get out 
of a difficulty or to appease an irate employer or teacher. 



THE PATHOLOGICAL LIAR 169 

He is attempting to thrust upon reality complicated 
plots — fantasies that were meant for private consump- 
tion only. He lies for the sake of lying, as the klepto- 
maniac steals to steal and not to lay in an oversupply of 
fans, furs, and umbrellas. He is well-named the mytho- 
maniac. 

Of course, in its milder forms we have little inclina- 
tion to snub such compensatory make-believes. The story 
of the big fish or prodigious child is recognized as a 
legitimate indulgence. We smile at the mother's fan- 
tasy because we recognize its compensatory value not 
for mothers only but for every son and daughter of us. 

The liar in good form may even be welcomed in the 
country-house, if not welcomed too frequently. One 
recalls Henry James's delightful Colowel Catpmdose with 
his unlimited ingenuity in fabrication. One also recalls 
the poor wife entangled in a cobweb of deceit which she 
ended by accepting as part payment for her marital 
joys. 

The pathological liar gets into the lime-light when on 
the witness-stand in court. To entangle his skein of 
deception is a task requiring great ingenuity. Dr. Healy 
has studied a number of most interesting cases. Let us 
cite one, that of Hazel M., a girl of sixteen years : 

One morning she appeared at a social center and 
stated she had come from a hospital where her brother, 
a young army man, had just died. She gave a remark- 
ably correct, detailed medical account of his suffering 
and death. In response to an inquiry she told of a year's 
training as a nurse ; that was how she knew about such 
subjects. In company with a social worker she went 



170 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

directly back to the hospital to make arrangements for 
what she requested, namely, a proper burial. At the 
hospital it was said that no such person had died there, 
and after she had for a time insisted on it she finally 
said she must have been dreaming. . . . The next day 
Hazel started in by saying, "It 's enough to convince 
anybody that I was not in the hospital when Mrs. B. 
and I went there and found out that they said I had not 
been there. ' ' 

Hazel's stories of the next few days gave descriptions 
of life with her family in several towns, of her gradua- 
tion from the high-school in Des Moines, of her experi- 
ence as a nurse in Cincinnati and Chicago, ... of the 
Cliff House at San Francisco, the seals on the rocks 
there. Then a shrewd detective ferreted out her family, 
though she had denied the existence of any of them in 
Chicago and indeed had stated that her father and 
mother had died years before. 

One of the most convincing things about her was her 
poise; she displayed an attitude of sincerity combined 
with a show of deep surprise when her word was ques- 
tioned. For example, the moment before her mother 
was brought in to see her she was asked what she would 
say if any one asserted that her mother was in the next 
room. Her instantaneous, emphatic response was, "She 
would have to rise out of her grave to be there." 

We soon learned that not a single detail the girl had 
given about her family was true. She was born and 
brought up in Chicago and had never been outside of 
the city. 

Under systematic treatment Hazel was in the course 
of four years cured of her tendency to falsification. 



A FICTIONAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY 171 

Not long since a Sunday supplement to a city daily 
under the head-line, "Heroine of Battle-Fields, De- 
scendant of the Royalty of Three Nations, ' ' featured an 
amazing story of a French nurse recuperating in Denver 
from wounds received in the World War. The article 
was illustrated by an entrancing picture of a queen on 
her throne, becrowned, besceptered, bejeweled. She was 
Countess de Montespan, descendant of the houses of 
Hesse, Marlborough, and Montespan. 

The story under the head-line and picture was worthy 
its introduction. Not only queen by heritage, direct heir 
of the third Napoleon, but genius in her own right was 
the illustrious countess — a surgeon of international rep- 
utation, graduate of the "Royal Medical Clinic' ' of 
Berlin who, at command of Cardinal Gibbons, had gone 
to France during the war-days and served as a surgeon 
with the order of the Gray Nuns. 

Among the myriad other soldiers whose lives the 
countess-surgeon saved there was one — a baron — whose 
wife she later became. By miraculous coincidence this 
husband — a second one — had exactly the same name as 
her first, bore a marvelous resemblance to him, and 
proved to be his cousin, though she had never heard of 
this second one until they met on the battle-field. But 
the countess was more than a surgeon j she was a gifted 
artist, a linguist of seven tongues, and a great philan- 
thropist. She had adopted and raised eighteen children 
besides her own son, a famous musician. 

The scene shifts now to a justice-court in a town in 
Wyoming where some weeks before the countess had 
been tried for practising medicine without a license and 



172 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

bound over for trial in the district court, after which 
event she vanished into thin air with an invalid husband 
— the baron — and a brother-in-law. Her next appear- 
ance was via the Sunday supplement. 

In the Wyoming chapter of the story the lady is fre- 
quently mentioned in the records of the social service 
secretary, as a devoted wife who is soon to be a mother, 
nursing a totally disabled husband and his disabled 
brother, herself a victim of the war, twice wounded. 
The attention of the Red Cross had been directed to her 
because of a letter written to one of its officials by a 
physician in the town who asks : 

Is it right for three who gave all to do -with so little 
when Rupert carried $10,000 insurance but has not been 
able to pay his dues as he was not able to stand up long 
enough to receive his discharge but received it lying 
down, being completely disabled for three months before 
being discharged. 

It is not difficult to locate the three people so de- 
scribed, but the physician who signed the letter cannot 
be identified. There is no one in the community prac- 
tising under the name signed. But there is, it seems, a 
new physician in town, a woman-physician whose pro- 
fessional card, ' ' Physician and Surgeon Licensed for the 
State of Wyoming," appears in the daily papers, with 
reports of births attended and death-certificates granted. 
And in the social column of the daily paper there is an 
account of a birthday party of a woman doctor, the 
guest-list containing the names of celebrities. Inquiry 
reveals the fact that it is this physician who sent the 



A MONTANA EMPRESS 173 

letter to the Red Cross authorities, signing one of several 
names which she had acquired by various devices. Fur- 
ther inquiry revealed also that this letter written in the 
character of physician was designed to center attention 
on her as wife. It was she, her husband, and brother- 
in-law who, as the letter proclaimed, gave all and re- 
ceived no aid from the Government. And it was for this 
family that, as attending physician, she asks an investi- 
gation. Well, she gets it — too much of it ! Investigation 
revealed no license to practise medicine either in Wyo- 
ming or any other State. Instead of years of service in 
France, there were years of labor in a penitentiary. 
Her greatest achievement had been the acquisition of 
five husbands. When she appeared in the justice-court, 
she was bound over to the district court for practising 
without a license. Suddenly she vanished. As she was 
soon to become a mother — or so she claimed — the author^ 
ities dropped the case. 

Some weeks later the aforementioned Sunday supple- 
ment featured her case in the flamboyant manner de- 
scribed above. Then again silence. But recently the 
Denver registrar of vital statistics received a letter from 
Montana asking if a certificate had been issued in that 
city for the birth of a girl to the woman the preceding 
summer. It had not. The registrar in answering encloses 
a blank to be filled out. When it comes back she finds to 
her astonishment that the mother is listed as an empress 
and the child as a countess. It is our old friend, the 
countess-surgeon. She also requests a duplicate birth- 
certificate to be filed in France. Is the baby fact or 
fiction? Does any one know? Even the countess? 



174 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

Dr. Healy's skilful analyses have laid bare many of 
the mental conflicts that issue in ' ' pseudologia phantas- 
tca," which is the technical name for what ordinary 
people call " lying. " And investigators have been in- 
terested in determining how often patients suffering 
from pseudologia phantastica have shown evidence of 
linguistic or literary ability, for it is evident that in 
imaginative constructions properly sponsored they might 
find a safety-valve for their facility in fabrication. 

The liar should saunter magazine-ward, not jail-ward. 
In that case, too, he might enjoy the thrill of being 
blown up by adverse verdicts. Some day the vocational 
expert will be at hand at the proper moment to direct 
his youthful footsteps. 

In a sense, all psychical alibis, all sour-grape remarks, 
are a species of lie, directed, however, self-ward. Mar- 
cus Aurelius taxed himself with dishonesty because he 
pleaded lack of time as an excuse for not answering a 
letter. But nearly two thousand years later this defense 
is not worn threadbare. We are still too good to play 
the game of politics, too modest to be famous. We really 
prefer dandelions — to the labor of digging them up. 

A popular way of compensating for personal inade- 
quacies is gossiping about one's neighbors or reading 
gossipy lives of the great or the near-great. Gossip is a 
sort of lightning-rod for the discharge of accumulated 
personal electricity. 

When we gossip we look at the actors on life's stage 
through the wrong end of the opera-glass and among 
such Lilliputians feel ourselves giants indeed. Or we 
see our neighbor reflected in our teaspoon, under which 



MILTON IN A TEASPOON 175 

condition, as George Eliot said, even Milton must con- 
sent to having the facial angle of a bumpkin. 

No man is a hero to his valet, which is not only whole- 
some for the hero but comforting for the valet. It 
reconciles him to his invisible halo. 

In yet another way gossiping is a safety-valve. It 
permits us to stretch our imaginations and to indulge in 
fantasies which the social censor prohibits our putting 
on the boards. All the daring wicked things, the desire 
to do which lies deep buried in human nature, may be 
scanned virtuously when labeled by some other man's 
name. One may play at will with the scandalous details, 
embroider luridly scene and motives, and again safely, 
because pseudonymously, so to speak. 

Perhaps some trifling flavor of truth gives an added 
tang to a scandal. The possibility of your neighbor 
actually being arrested for breaking the seventh or the 
ninth commandment enlarges the license you may give 
your imagination, while a trial in court justifies a whole 
community in head-lining motives. 

The psychoanalyst handles gossip just as he handles 
dreams. Your favorite repertory of scandals shows your 
deep-seated interests and desires. The vicarious flirt 
and the vicarious thief are life's profiteers. They have 
the fun without paying the piper. 

And yet of course the imagination of the efficient 
gossip does her great credit. She is a peripatetic Sunday 
supplement, vastly entertaining and disturbing only be- 
cause she gives her stories too much local color. Let 
her syndicate her inventions and publish them broadcast 
instead of reserving them for a limited circulation. 



176 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

For, after all, none of ns is as wicked as we would like 
to be and the gossip's expression of secret aspirations 
will also satisfy our suppressed wishes. 

Absolutely immune to gossip one would be absolutely 
without human sympathies — or frailties. 

Make-believe, as we have seen, is usually active in the 
service of a desire or fear. It creates a mental object to 
satisfy the demands of love or hunger or to explain 
terror. Imagination is only make-believe become aggres- 
sive with a determination to objectify its creations so 
that they may win social recognition. This recognition 
it wins the more easily, the more successfully it creates 
objects that satisfy the desires of many others beside 
itself; an object of social love, of social adoration, or of 
social justice. 

Men of dominating imagination are copartners with 
nature in the creation of worlds of reality. They build a 
pyramid that defies the elements, a sphinx that faces the 
desert with infinite irony; they send into the clouds 
Gothic pinnacles or themselves ride on the currents of 
the air. They unravel clashing sounds and weave them 
into harmonies; they create gods and madonnas more 
potent than those attested by the muse of history. 

Make-believe carried out as private fantasy cuts one 
off from social living and may land one in the asylum. 
Make-believe busied with objectifying its creations in 
picture or poem or song so that others may share the 
creator's satisfaction may speed one to the heights of 
influence and fame. 

Great literature is obviously the compensatory make- 
believe of a great mind. It has universal appeal be- 



THE TRAGEDY OF SHELLEY 177 

cause it voices a universal dream and suggests its fulfil- 
ment. The sorry scheme of things is shattered and re- 
molded nearer to the heart's desire. 

Very simple and obvious is the unfulfilled desire com- 
pensated for in Lamb's "Dream Children' ' or Tenny- 
son's "In Memoriam." Very elaborate the drama in 
Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound." Much of the trag- 
edy of Shelley's life grew out of conflict, first with a 
narrow intolerant father, then with a dogmatic and 
short-sighted world. Rebellion is a sustained theme in 
this poet's creations; rebellion at first self-centered in 
its motives and in its phrasing, but at last completely 
sublimated in that incomparable lyrical drama, "Pro- 
metheus Unbound. ' ' No longer is it Percy Bysshe Shelley 
who is wronged, deprived of his heritage, but the bringer 
of fire to man, to a people who dwell in darkness. 

It 's a nice point in literary technic where the author 
shall keep himself while manipulating the plot. Shall 
he, like the small boy of an earlier paragraph, "play he 
is nothing"? Or shall he insist upon being the engineer 
and running the story in his own person ? 

It would seem that great authors, like small boys, have 
different opinions on this matter and like the latter 
sometimes refuse to play together because of a difference 
in their psychological make-up. 

Some writers are always their own hero or heroine. 
The autobiographical element is much in evidence. 
Some have recourse to masquerade and hide behind the 
favorite saint or rogue. Others perform marvels of the 
split personality and flit rapidly from one character to 
another. 



178 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

These differences in the mental make-up of the writer 
have all sorts of influence upon the way the story is told. 
The author who plays he is nothing would only infre- 
quently tell a story in the first person and still more 
rarely in the second. The third person form covers, 
however, a multitude of psychological possibilities, as 
well as of literary sins, 

j. E. D. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE CASE-SYSTEM OF LITERARY TRAINING 

The preceding chapters have given numerous exam- 
ples of where great and little fictionists have found 
story-material. In the remainder of the book we suggest 
the "case-system" of study in training for fiction- 
writing, give further hints to the young writer of where 
to look for literary stuff, and show the possibility of 
applying modern methods of measurement in estimating 
the degree of literary ability possessed by an aspirant to 
literary honors. 

The personal letters to the papers on any subject are 
more profitable reading for a novelist than other novels. 
Too much of our literature is parasitic. It consists of 
books that have grown out of books instead of real life. 
An indolent author finds it easier to get his knowledge 
of human nature at second-hand — or third or fourth- 
hand — rather than take the trouble to dig it out for 
himself bit by bit from the people he knows. The com- 
mon novel is like the mold that grows on a lichen that 
grows on a mistletoe that grows on an oak. The vital 
sap is much diluted before it gets to the third parasite. 

Now one can not know intimately many people. The 
novelist is not allowed to use the post-office as a clinic 
and read all the letters. Some of our writers have been 

179 



180 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

making great use of what they learned from acting as 
censors during the war, but such opportunities come 
rarely, or so at least we hope. Next to private letters 
come the letters to the press, although these are written 
consciously for publication and more or less edited. 
But even such are not to be neglected, for they sometimes 
afford a glimpse through a window of the soul. 

Arnold Bennett confesses that he acquired his knowl- 
edge of feminine fashions and psychology when he was 
editor of "Gwendoline Column " in a ladies' paper. 
As he says: 

I learned a good deal about frocks, household manage- 
ment, and the secret nature of women, especially the 
secret nature of women. As for frocks, I have sincerely 
tried to forget that branch of human knowledge ; never- 
theless the habit, acquired then, of glancing first at a 
woman 's skirt and her shoes, has never left me. 

Samuel Richardson, who was said to be the first Eng- 
lish novelist to understand the heart of woman, got his 
training in a similar way. There were no columnists in 
the eighteenth century, but by the time he was thirteen 
he was as private secretary writing love-letters for three 
young women and he continued to be the confidant and 
correspondent of many of the sex until his death at 
seventy-two. After he was fifty-two London publishers 
begged him to utilize his unique knowledge by writing a 
series of letters of good advice to servant-girls on their 
love-affairs. He set to work and within two months had 
turned out the two volumes of ' ' Pamela, ' ' which started 
a new school of English fiction. 



THE PUBLIC CONFESSIONAL 181 

With these high precedents no writer need disdain to 
peruse the columns devoted to " Side-Talks with the 
Girls," "Advice to the Love-Lorn," "Hints to the 
Heart-Broken, ' ' and the like which appear daily in our 
newspapers. Some of these letters are sent in as jokes by 
college-boys. Some are composed by the columnist to 
fit what he or she wants to say. But most of them are 
genuine human documents, silly, pathetic, and tragic, as 
heartfelt as the London " Times" Personals and not so 
cryptic. There is also good psychology to be found in 
the columns, now so popular, of letters on "My Most 
Embarrassing Moment." The "case-system" of study 
is as valuable in training for fiction-writing as for law- 
practice. 

THE CONFESSIONAL COLUMN 

An English woman explains the Personals of the 
London "Times" as an escape-valve for the repressed 
emotions characteristic of the English people. Ameri- 
cans are not supposed to suffer so much from reticence 
and repression, but they too seize any opportunity to 
expose their troubles to the world under the veil of 
anonymity. Let an editor open a column offering advice 
on financial affairs by "A "Wall Street Broker," on 
affairs of the heart by "Aunt Mary," on household 
difficulties by ' ' The Wise Lady From Philadelphia, ' ' on 
etiquette by "Mademoiselle Comme II Faut," on medical 
matters by "Dr. Vitamine," or on religious doubts by 
"The Rev. Dr. Goodman," and he will need another 
blue-and-white bag to bring the mail from the post- 
office. Probably if one of our yellow journals started a 



182 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

column headed "Counsel to Unsuspected Criminals by 
C-33," men and women would hasten to confess their 
secret sins as frankly as a good Catholic confesses to his 
priest. 

It may be said of such columns more truly than of 
most of the paper that they * ' fill a long-felt want. ' ' One 
motive for rushing into print with one's private affairs 
is doubtless the delight of revealing one 's feelings while 
concealing one 's identity, which is the charm of a masked 
ball or a carnival or street frolic. This is the uncon- 
fessed motive of many a novelist too. But apart from 
that there is a genuine desire for advice in matters that 
are for the readers very serious questions. And for 
the most part the advice they get is sensible and helpful, 
however trite it may sound to the sophisticated. Any- 
body who reads over these letters, especially those that 
are not answered in print, will be convinced of the 
earnestness and distress of most of the writers. The 
reader of the paper, especially the man reader, may 
think it silly of the fourteen-year-old girl to ask the 
editor if she is ' ' too young to wear silk hose, ' ' but prob- 
ably the poor girl has spent more than one sleepless 
night over the problem. And it is no joke for a girl to 
miss a date with her sweetheart by fifteen minutes. If 
the reader can not see the pathos in the letter asking 
"how I can learn to like an old bachelor " he may as well 
quit trying to make a writer out of himself and go into 
carpentering. 

Let not the would-be writer despise and neglect what 
seems to him silliness. If his books appeal only to those 
who are free from any sort of silliness they will have a 



HEART TROUBLES 



183 



very limited circulation. If his books contain no silly 
characters they will be very silly novels. Let him re- 
member Arnold Bennett admits that he "learned about 
women from" the letters he got as * ' Gwendolin. ' ' It 
is good training but a hard life, that of mother-con- 
fessor. It is rumored that three strong men have broken 
down under the strain of bearing the feminine nam de 
plume of the most popular of the purvey ors.of first aid 
to the heartbroken. 

We give only a few of these letters, for the reader can 
find plenty just as good in almost any popular paper 
that he buys at the newsstand. 



I am a girl seventeen years of 
age and am considered very 
good-looking. I go to high 
school but am never invited to 
any dances although the young 
men at school seem to like me. 
Some of the girls I know that 
do not dress nearly as nice as I 
do, and are not at all nice-look- 
ing, go to ever so many. Do 
you know why this is? 

Nanette. 

Would you kindly tell me how 
I could lose a young man's 
friendship? I am a girl of sev- 
enteen and am considered very 
pretty. The fellow I 'm speaking 
of is four years my senior and 
is very ugly. He is very tall and 
has extremely red hair, which I 
detest. When I 'm out with my 
friends he is always butting in. 
Curlt-Hair. 

What do you think of a fellow 
who has two girls? He likes 
one just as much as the other. 
I am one of those girls — sixteen 
years of age. We both love him. 
and he seems to return both of 
our affections. I asked him to 
give either one of us up, but it 
seems to be a hard proposition 
for him to do. Saturday night 
he took me out, and Sunday 
night he took the other girl out. 
When she finds out he takes me 



out he says she does n't mind, 
but when I find out he takes her 
out I get jealous. What would 
you advise me to do? 

I have been going with two 
different boys, writing to both, 
and almost leading one to be- 
lieve that I like him when I care 
nothing for him. My other 
friend has become very jealous 
and does not care now as he 
used to. 

What can I do to make him 
care, and continue with both? 

I am a girl of nineteen and 
am keeping steady company with 
a young man of twenty. He has 
as much as proposed to me two 
or three times. That is, he has 
not said so directly, but has 
asked me what kind of diamond 
ring I like and other little 
things like that; also in talking 
of his future he includes me in 
it. 

He says he loves me and that 
he will never give me up, but he 
does n't seem as affectionate as 
I think he oueht to. I am not 
the kind of girl who likes what 
is known as "mushv love," but 
still I don't think my friend is 
quite as lovable as he ought to 
be. 

Do you think that maybe he 
is sort of reserved, or can you 



184 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



give me any other reason for the 
way he acts? I realize that this 
is a rather difficult question for 
you to answer, as you do not 
know him, but I thought per- 
haps you have had more experi- 
ence than I have in this line and 
could help me out a bit. 

May. 

Some time ago I met a fine 
young girl of my own age and 
went with her for some time, 
until one day I walked home 
with her when she was kind of 
uppish, and ever since when I 
see her on the street she does 
not speak, although I seem to 
know that she likes me. Can 
you advise me how to make up 
with her ? 

One morning I saw her and 
she smiled but she was still mad. 
I never had nerve enough to 
ask her out to the movies with 
me or any place else and will 
you please advise me how to aste 
her and when? I always try to 
go careful with a girl but it all 
seems to go against me. 

James. 

I am an English girl, sixteen 
years of age, and my parents 
insist upon my marrying a man 
twenty-four years of age, be- 
cause of his wealth. Can I not 
do something? I hate this man. 

I amta fellow twenty years old 
and I am in love with a girl, 
nineteen. Now this girl seems 
queer to me. One minute she 
seems to like me and the next 
minute she is different. Every 
time I take her out (no matter 
where to) she either sits and 
bites her fingers or sits in a 
corner and says nothing. Our 
courtship has been nearly a year 
and a half now. Lately she 
seems to turn to my chum and 
then back to me. What would 
you do if you were in my place? 
Clarence. 

I am in love with a young 
man and I think he loves me 
also, as his actions indicate as 
much and I have been told by 
friends that he loves me truly. 
He has recently gotten a car and 
we have been taking drives into 
the near-by country and he has 
gotten into the habit of telling 



me funny stories. Do you think 
if he really loved me that he 
would persist in telling me those 
stories when I do not want to 
hear them? 

I am going with a young man 
four years my senior. I love 
him. Having a date with him 
one night at 7:30 I happened to 
show up at a quarter to eight 
and he was not there and on the 
same night I met him at a school 
dance and he said he was 
through with me, and while 
saying it he smiled and said that 
I was going with another man 
the same night, which was a lie. 
Will you please advise me if it 
is right for me to make up and 
how, or to let him make up with 
me? 

I am in love with a fellow, but 
do not know whether or not he 
loves me. Advise me as to how 
to find out without asking him, 
or how to win his love. 

Would you kindly tell me why 
girls and boys close their eyes 
when they are being kissed? 
Thank you ever so much. 

I am a young man of twenty- 
one and, although I hold a re- 
sponsible position in a bank, I 
am at a loss to know how I can 
answer this question. 

Recently a young lady, a friend 
of mine, introduced me to a 
friend of hers in whom I took a 
great interest. 

I would like to see this other 
girl some time without hurting 
the other girl's feelings. What 
would you advise me to do? 

I am bringing to you the 
greatest problem of my life. I 
am a young man, considered by 
all the ladies very good-looking. 
I find it impossible to win a girl 
on account of my stuttering. 
Every time I start to proclaim 
my love for a girl, I immediately 
begin to stutter. On tbis ac- 
count I am desperately unhappy, 
and will you please tell me how 
I can remedy this fault so as to 
win a girl and make my happi- 
ness complete? 

Stammering N. 



VITAL QUESTIONS 



185 



I am a girl of fourteen and am 
wearing: puffs. Do you think It 
is right for my sisters to say I 
am too young to have my own 
selection in my dresses and 
shoes? I have two other girl 
friends who are only fourteen 
and have their own selection in 
everything. They wear their 
hair to suit themselves. Am I 
too young to wear silk hose? 
Please answer my letter soon, 
for I am dying to hear from you. 

I want your advice about how 
I can learn to like an old bach- 
elor and win him. 



I am going with a girl who 
is one year younger than my- 
self and whom I love. 

She has stated many times 
that she cares for me, but every 
time I see her she quarrels with 
me and does not talk to me for 
some time. Then after she gets 
over her quarrelsome rage I 
make up. Then she is as true 
to me as ever. 



Do you think I do right by 
making up with her, and do you 
think she cares for me when she 
acts in this manner? 

We are two girl friends who 
are engaged to two very fine 
young men. All preparations 
are being made for our double 
wedding, which is to be real 
soon. But we are very unde- 
cided as we have met two other 
young men of whom we think so 
much more. Of course we can 
not decide what to do about it 
as we can not tell our fiances. 
What can we do about it? 

Two Pals. 

As I am an orphan and have 
nobody to turn to for advice, I 
turn to you, the world's best 
friend, and beg of you to answer 
me one question: Should a per- 
son follow the dictates of the 
heart or the conscience? B. G. 

For answer, B. G., I would ad- 
vise a troubled conscience is a 
much harder thing to live with 
than a troubled heart. 



EMBARRASSING MOMENTS 



One would think that the last thing a person would 
want to tell the public about was when he made a fool of 
himself. Yet when some ingenious editor opened a 
column in which people were to write about the most 
embarrassing incident of their lives he found an abun- 
dance of contributors and readers. The interesting thing 
about the letters from a psychological point of view is 
that the incidents in many cases are so exceedingly 
trivial that one would suppose that they would hardly 
cause a moment's annoyance, yet they have evidently 
been the cause of long-continued distress. They have 
formed a complex as the Freudians would say, and 
hence the desire to confess it to the world. A large pro- 



186 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



portion of them date from early adolescence, when one 
is most sensitive to humiliation. The cause of the pain- 
ful impression is almost always the loss of self-esteem, or 
rather the self -felt loss of the esteem of others. 



The most embarrassing' mo- 
ment of my whole life happened 
about a year ago in a local 
candy- store, where I was drink- 
ing a soft drink and casually 
smoking a cigarette. As I was 
just about to flick the ashes off, 
a young lady passed me and 
received the fire and ashes both 
on the back of her coat all un- 
beknown to her. As I perceived 
the fire, and not wanting to 
burn a hole in the coat, I im- 
mediately started to brush them 
away, wherewith she turned, 
gazed at me and haughtily in- 
quired, "Sir. how dare you?" It 
was then that I realized the 
thing had happened without her 
knowledge, and amidst the 
laughing of the crowd in the 
store I humbly made my exit. 

I was thoroughly absorbed in 
teaching an English class when 
a devoted little girl in the front 
seat scribbled a note and handed 
it to me. It read : "Miss H. : The 
end of your switch is sticking 
straight up." 

When I was eighteen my fam- 
ily enjoyed teasing me about a 
young man who delivered gro- 
ceries to our house. As we were 
of the bashful sort, I always 
made an effort to absent myself 
from the kitchen whenever he 
was expected. 

One day, however, I was on 
my hands and knees scrubbing 
the kitchen floor, when I heard 
him coming. I just had time 
enough to crawl under the 
kitchen table, and thought I 
would keep mum until he left. 
Everything went all ricrht until 
he emptied the potatoes into a 
basket, when one rolled on the 
floor under the table, and he 
went after it. 

One winter day I was passing 
a church just as the congrega- 



tion was gathering. Every one 
was walking in the street to 
avoid the extremely icy walks. 
Just as a good-looking girl was 
turning toward the church she 
slipped and fell down. I hur- 
ried to assist her but I forgot 
the ice! 

The first thing I knew I was 
sitting close beside her — almost 
cheek to cheek. I hastily arose 
and helped her to the walk, but, 
believe me, I was much too em- 
barrassed to see the funny side, 
as did the lookers-on. 

The next time I see a girl in 
distress I shall pass by on the 
other side. P. B. 

I was to have a date with a 
man from out of town and the 
day before the date, I received 
an invitation to a dinner-dance 
for the same night. I accepted 
after having carefullv found out 
just who was invited. The day 
of the dinner arrived and I 
called up the out-of-town man 
and explained carefully that I 
had sprained my ankle and 
would be unable to keep the 
date. Imagine my embarrass- 
ment at finding myself seated 
next to this same chap at the 
dinner. The hostess had invited 
him at the eleventh hour in place 
of a guest who had disappointed 
her. 

A girl friend of mine had just 
arrived from a neighboring city 
to pay me a visit. 

As we walked from the railway 
station in company with another 
girl, the visitor surveyed the 
different buildings in sight, and 
remarked: "You have a lot of 
pretty homes here, have n't you ? 
But whose can that barnlike 
dwelling over there be?" 

After a moment's embarrassed 
hesitation on our part, my local 
girl friend answered cheerily, 
"That is where I live." 



PSYCHOLOGY OF EMBARRASSMENT 187 



The other day a girl in the 
bank in which I 'm employed 
came over and asked if I would 
like to read one of the Embar- 
rassing Moments. It was about 
a girl who had bought a broom 
and, wrapping it, thought she 
could get it safely home with- 
out any one noticing it. She 
had n't gotten far when the 
wrappings were off. 

After reading it, I said, "She 
must have been a dumbbell to 
imagine she could disguise a 
broom." 

I looked up and met an icy 
stare. 

She said: "I was the dumb- 
bell." R. S. 

Some time ago I met a lovely 
woman at a social affair and in- 
vited her to call. She took the 
opportunity to call one after- 
noon while she was in the 
neighborhood, but I was so busy 
scrubbing the front porch that 
I did not see her coming until 
she was too near for me to 
escape. My hair was still in 
crimpers, my dress untidy, and 
as she had seen me but once 
before, I decided to take a 
chance. 

"Mrs. Blake." I said, "will see 
you in a few minutes." 

I hoped to get a chance to 
change my costume. Her ex- 
pression showed she thought all 
was regular, but just then a 
dear friend passed by and 
greeted me by name. For a 
moment my caller seemed puz- 
zled, then, walking away, she 
said courteously, "I '11 come 
some other time." 

I feel now as though I could 
walk miles out of my way to 
avoid meeting that woman. 

My most embarrassing moment 
occurred while attending a thea- 
ter with my friend. 

It was a pathetic scene which 
was being shown as we came in, 
and the audience was so atten- 
tive that the slightest noise could 
be heard throughout the theater. 

We had just been seated, when 
my friend screamed. As quick 
as a flash all eyes turned on me, 



as I turned all colors of the 
rainbow. 

While taking off my hat I had 
absent-mindedly stuck my hat- 
pin in my friend's leg. Do you 
wonder she screamed? 

I was approaching the climax 
in an amateur play with which 
we had had a week of wonderful 
success. Stealthily I crept up 
behind the villain, who in silks 
and laces, dark curls on shoul- 
ders, and a really fine figure, had 
almost eclipsed our blond hero. 
(Swiftly I reached across his 
shoulder to secure an important 
document. I got the paper all 
right, and, lifting it high above 
my head with a dramatic laugh, 
I waited confidently for the ap- 
plause which always followed. 

Something was evidently 
wrong this time, however, for 
instead of the expected applause 
there was a horrified gasp from 
my romantic villain and then 
such laughter as that old play- 
house had probably never before 
heard. 

Bewildered, I looked about me, 
still maintaining what one of 
my dear friends called my "In- 
dian chief triumphant" pose. 
• One look at my villain, how- 
ever, solved the puzzle. In se- 
curing the paper so vigorously 
I had also clutched one of the 
villain's long black curls, and 
he now sat stunned, in all the 
disillusioning nudity of an al- 
most totally bald head. 

During my college days I went 
out one evening with a young 
man friend and discovered upon 
my return that I had forgotten, 
my house key. Not liking to 
arouse the sleeping household, 
we investigated the windows 
and found one which would 
open. 

I had just climbed inside when 
I heard a man's voice call out, 
"Who's that?" 

"It's just Lulu," I answered, 
reassuringly. 

"Well, who in thunder's 
Lulu?" 

I had got into the house next 
door! 



188 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

I promised my friend that I the door and say I was not 

would go to the show with him, home. My friend asked him where 

and after a while changed my I was. Imagine my embar- 

mind. He was to call for me at rassment when Freddie turned 

six o'clock. When the bell rang toward me and said : "What 

I told my little brother to go to shall I say now?" 

HEADLINES AS CLUES TO PLOTS 

We have in America nothing corresponding to the 
agony column in the London ''Times" but we have 
something quite as agonizing, that is the newspaper 
head-line. This is an American invention for saving 
time, like the telephone and express elevator. Its object 
is to convey the gist of the news in the fewest possible 
words so that it may be gathered between bites at a 
quick-lunch counter, the breakfast-table, or while hang- 
ing by one hand from a strap in a crowded street-car. 
Whatever else we may think of it, the American news- 
paper heading is an interesting literary exercise, com- 
parable in difficulty to the construction of an acrostic or 
sonnet. In structure it resembles an overture which 
begins with the simplest form of the main motif. This is 
then repeated in more developed forms and the subordi- 
nate themes of the opera introduced one by one until the 
whole is woven together in complicated correlation just 
before the curtain rises. 

So, too, in constructing the head of a newspaper 
article the first line must give the main point. The 
second and subsequent lines repeat it in other words and 
with fuller information. The opening paragraph of the 
text tells the story over in other words and with all the 
detail that can be packed into a sentence. Then follows 
at full length the complete storj^ in orderly narrative 



THE ART OF THE HEAD-LINE 189 

fashion, but so written that the tail of it may be cut off 
inch by inch without killing it if the make-up requires 
such curtailment at the last moment. The number of 
letters in each line is fixed within narrow limits and it is 
also required that each line must contain a verb in the 
present tense, expressed or implied. This is merely a 
grammatical way of saying that only action is news. 
The head-line artist gets into the habit of expressing his 
ideas in sentences of, say, fifteen or thirty-six words 
each. He thinks in numbers for the numbers come. If 
you suppose his is an easy task ask a friend to cut off the 
head-lines of a newspaper-clipping and tell you the 
number of letters required for each line. Then see if 
you can write as good a set of head-lines within three 
minutes as did the copy-reader on this article. In for- 
eign newspapers the head-line does not tell the story but 
merely indicates the subject, and that often vaguely, as 
"Financial Crisis" or "Balkan Imbroglio." 

It would be interesting to trace the effect of head- 
lines on the mentality of newspaper readers and on the 
development of the American language, but that subject 
must be left to some graduate student in English who is 
in search of a Ph. D. thesis. But I may mention one 
conspicuous instance of the influence of the head-line on 
language and that is the prevailing tendency toward the 
use of monosyllables. The polysyllabic propensity of the 
old-fashioned newspaper writer has been checked by the 
introduction of the dynamic head-line where the words 
must be as short, forcible, and definite as possible. This 
leads to such briefer or abbreviated forms as "Jap," 
"Httfi," "L" for elevated railroad, "dry" for prohibi- 



190 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

tion, "wire" for telegraph, "car" for automobile, "flu" 
for influenza, "movie" or "film" for cinematograph, 
"kick" for remonstrate, "probe" for investigate, 
"Frisco" for San Francisco, "Chian" for Cheyenne, 
etc. 

Such contractions and the free use of evanescent 
slang make our head-lines unintelligible to foreigners 
and even to ourselves unless we are familiar with the 
subject. Englishmen found difficulty in comprehending 
that the caption "Wales Is a Mixer" was intended as a 
tribute to the democratic manners of their future sov- 
ereign. "Holy Cross Romps on Boston" might be mis- 
interpreted by a reader unfamiliar with the sporting 
page. A classic example — let me say rather, instance — 
is "Cop Croaks Crook by Clip on Coke." When Guiteau 
was executed more than one paper headed the account 
"Sent to Satan/ ' So we can hardly blame a later re- 
porter who, when he was writing up the execution of a 
murderer who repented on the scaffold and announced 
his hope of salvation, followed suit by heading his story 
"Jerked to Jesus." In those days newspaper men 
depended so much upon "apt alliteration's artful aid" 
that the dailies came to look like circus-posters or Anglo- 
Saxon poetry. Therefore the practice fell into dis- 
repute and nowadays the best editors frown upon allit- 
eration or taboo it altogether. 

Newspaper head-lines often give an erroneous idea of 
the article below, sometimes intentionally because of 
editorial bias, more often accidentally because of hasty 
reading. An account of the* experiments of the United 



HEAD-LINE HINTS 191 

States burean of fisheries in the destruction of malaria- 
carrying mosquitoes by the introduction of minnows into 
ponds was sent out under the caption "Fish Prevent 
Malaria." But an editor, seeing that the head did not 
fill out his column, amplified it to read "Fish Prevent 
Malaria; Eat More Fish." 

Head-lines are the opposite of the Personals in that 
they are intended, not to transmit a secret message to 
one person but to attract the attention of all. But they 
are likewise written in an elliptical cable-code style and 
so are sometimes equally stimulating to the imagination. 
Many a novelist gets incidents and ideas from the curious 
incidents that the keen-scented reporter discovers and 
dishes up in such piquant fashion at our breakfast- 
table. 

It will not be necessary to give many of them here for 
they can be clipped from any daily, but below are a few 
that may suggest a "story" to the reader, though 
perhaps quite another than the one they originally 
headed. 

E. e. s. 

Head-Lines From American Newspapers 

FAKUEB KICKS HIS LITTLE SOX TO DEATH FOB LISPING 

MAN FINED $59 FOE CALLING HIMSELF NAMES ON STREET 

GIRL ALTERNATELY CHILD OF FOUR AND MISS OF 
NINETEEN 

FOUR PRETTY RUSSIAN GIRLS FLEEING FROM BOLSHEVIKI 

COME FROM CONSTANTINOPLE TO FIND 

AMERICAN HUSBANDS 

HAD 15 HUSBANDS, FORGETS NAMES OF 1L 

CIRCUIT COURT RULES THAT A BEE OAN ONLY STING ONCE 



192 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

SAM GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR BEING HUNG 

BREAKNECK RACE FOR A CRAB-FLAKE; "JUST BULLY," 
SAYS BRITISH GOVERNOR GENERAL'S DAUGHTER 10 

JUDGE REFUSES TO ANNUL JOKE MARRIAGE OF VIRGINIA 

COUPLE 

CAN MAN MAKE LOVE IN AEROPLANE? "YES," SAYS WIFE 
ASKING DIVORCE 

ILLITERATE MAN OF FORTY BECOMES SCHOLAR IN TWO 
YEARS FOR WOMAN'S SAKE 

BURNING OF STORE CAUSES SUICIDE OF BROTHER AND 
SISTER 

KIDNAPPERS TAKE GIRLS FROM ESCORTS AND DRIVE OFF 
IN AUTO 

WEALTHY FAMILY OBJECTS TO MOVIE-ACTING ON ESTATE 

MAN WHO WAS "DEAD" TELLS HOW IT FELT TO HAVE 
SOUL PASS FROM BODY 

CUPID HAD A HAND IN THE ARRANGEMENT OF THE 
SALESROOMS 

MUTT AND JEFF OF UNDERWORLD AGAIN STAGING HOLDUPS 

MEN MAY NOT ASSIST IN SORORITY RUSHING 

CLAIMS THEY STOLE HIS DWELLING HOUSE 

FEROCIOUS WHAT-IS-IT INFESTS THE BIG-HORNS 

GIRL'S DEMAND FOR HER PET PARROT RESULTS IN STEM- 
MING PANIC AT SEA 

AVOIDS CHURCH WEDDING AFTER BUYING TROUSSEAU 

SECURITIES VALUED AT $75,000 SAID TO BE CONTAINED IN 

CHEST WHICH DISAPPEARED SHORTLY BEFORE 

MURDER WAS COMMITTED 

MAN SHOOTS SELF IN CIRCLE DOCTOR DREW OVER HEART 

WHO WAS THE PIED PIPER OF YOUR LIFE? 

MOCK SANTA CLAUS MURDERS GIRL OF FIVE 

FRENCH HOME HAUNTED WITH DELUGE OF NAILS 

MADE HER LIVE ON PEAS 3 WEEKS WIFE SAYS 

JUDGE SOBS WHEN KATIE SHOKOS ADMITS SELLING MOON- 
SHINE TO BUY MILK FOR HER BABIES 

PHYSICIANS SAY FLIRTING MAY CURE INDIGESTION 

10 The story of this head-line may be found in S. M. McKenna 's 
"Lady Lilith," p. 99. 



A MISSING STORY CONTEST 193 

JURY FINDS OUIJA-BOARD NOT GUILTY OF SLANDER 

TEMPEST IN MONTCLAIR OVER FELINE VAGRANCY 

Traps Ordered to Catch the Cats that Kill the Rats to Save the 
Birds That Despoil Gardens 

IRISH BLOOD RALLIES DYING RUSSIAN JEW 

PARIS EX-POILU SHOT BY WAR GOD-MOTHER 

SKIPPER SAYS HIS WIFE HELD WHEEL WHILE HE FOUGHT 
MUTINEER 

POPULAR LECTURER ON "WHY WORRY?" COMMITS SUICIDE 

HARVARD STUDENT SUES EX-FIANCEE FOR RECOVERY OF 
PRESENTS 

BOBS HAIR AT 110 

MME. MAETERLINCK'S PEKINESE FLIES AT THROAT OF 
ACTOR PLAYING GOLAUD AT REHEARSAL 

LOVE RESTORES VISCOUNT GREY'S SIGHT; HE IS TO MARRY 

SOON 

WORE WINGED HEELS BUT HE LOST 'EM 

LIVE SOLDIER GIVEN MEDAL FOR DYING 

GIRL BREAKS MONTH-LONG SLEEP ON DAY BEFORE HER 
WEDDING DATE 

LEAVES BASKET, ASKS FOR BABY, GETS FOUR 

TRAP-DOOR IN HEEL IS USED BY MEXICAN TO SMUGGLE 

DOPE 

YOUTH LOSES RACE TO BE PRESENT AT HIS OWN FUNERAL 

MAY SELL TOMBSTONE AT PUBLIC AUCTION 

WICKED FLEE WHEN NO ONE PURSUETH 

WOMAN BEQUEATHS SALOON TO HER HUSBAND 

TWO MONEYLESS TRAVELERS SAY HE OFFERED TO FINANCE 
THEM WITH BAD DOLLARS 

SINGING ELEVEN OF FOOT-BALL MEN MAKES NOVELTY 

CHEATER'S CONSCIENCE CAUSE OF HIS DEATH, SAYS 
DOCTOR 

PORTABLE JAILS ARE LATEST FAD 

LANDLADY'S PROFIT ONLY $116 FOR NINE MONTHS' WORK 

FOREIGNER STEALS CONFIDENTIAL RADIO REPORT AFTER 
KNOCKING ARMY OFFICER'S WIFE UNCONSCIOUS 

ANGRY WOMEN PERIL TO BUS CONDUCTORS 



194 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

JEALOUS WIFE KILLS HUSBAND AND TYPIST IN HIS OFFICE 
AFTER SPYING 

FIND STOLEN STOCK WORTH $78,000 IN HOLLOW BEDPOST 

WISCONSIN MAN FORBIDS ANY OF FAMILY TO WED 

AFFABLE WAITER RUDE AT HOME 

BRIDEGROOM AND BEST MAN ARRESTED IN ATTEMPT TO 
AUCTION AUTO 

WOMAN SMUGGLING HEROINE FROM CANADA DIES IN 
PULLMAN 

QUIZZES FILM ACTRESS ABOUT GOING BAREFOOT ON MOTOR 

RIDE 

KILLS BOBCAT WITH BARE HANDS 

WILLIAM ROCKEFELLER BUILDING $250,000 GRANITE 
MAUSOLEUM 

BOYS FIND RICH HOBO FROZEN TO DEATH IN HAUNTED 

HOUSE 

WOMAN OF MEANS WITH INFANT IN ARMS STEALS $15 DRESS 

AND IS SENTENCED TO WORKHOUSE FOR 

SHOPLIFTING 

CARRIED SIX QUARTS OF WHISKY TO HIS WEDDING BUT 
LOSES BRIDE, LIQUOR AND FREEDOM 

WOMAN TAKES POISON ON LEARNING RECTOR IS MARRIED 

PARIS GARDENER FINDS JEWELRY WORTH 600,000 FRANCS, 

STOLEN FROM MME. BEAUREPAIRE IN JULY, 1914, 

AND BURIED UNDER TREE 

MAN MAROONED FIVE HOURS TOP OF 150-FOOT CHIMNEY 
BEMOANS LACK OF CIGARETTE 

BLIND GIRL REGAINS SIGHT AS SALVATION ARMY LASSIES 

SING 

POISON PEN* LETTERS DRIVE TWO HUSBANDS TO SUICIDE 

GOLD NUGGET FOUND IN CROP OF CHRISTMAS GOOSE: 
GRAVEL BED STAKED OUT IN MINING-CLAIM 

GROOM SUES FOR ANNULMENT 30 MINUTES AFTER MARRY- 
ING; SAYS WIFE WON'T LIVE WITH HIM 

SOURCE AND PURCHASER OF $825,000 PEARL NECKLACE 
STILL A MYSTERY 

GOLD STAR WOMAN OF 100 NEEDS A HOME 

JUDGE TELLS COUPLE SEEKING DIVORCE TO SELL AUTO 
AND BUY HOUSE 

MINISTER CRITICIZED FOR PLAYING JAZZ RECORD AT HOME 



TABLOID PLOTS 195 

NEWSPAPER ITEMS AS STORY-GERMS 

No fiction- writer need ever worry about plot-germs — 
whatever source of worry he may find in germs of 
another sort — so long as the journalist continues to col- 
lect them for him in his world-wide laboratory. Life 
itself conspires with the journalist to keep him busy. 
Plot-material may be found in any newspaper sheet, 
whether it be published in the small town of Sundance or 
cosmopolitan New York. Life is much more generous in 
its bestowal of dramatic moments than some folks would 
have us believe. 

The skeletonized news stories of the now popular 
tabloid journals are well adapted to the writer's needs. 
They tell just enough to stimulate the imagination and 
yet not enough to paralyze the invention. The jour- 
nalist in reducing the story to this form has picked out 
the particular point that makes the incident interesting 
— whatever is strange, romantic, astonishing about it — 
and has cast away the more or less commonplace cir- 
cumstantials. The novelist has to reverse this process 
and to clothe the incident in the details that give the 
story verisimilitude and reality. But do not attempt to 
restore the original incident as it actually happened. 
On the contrary it is much better practice to see if you 
can give an interpretation and motive as unlike as pos- 
sible to the obvious one the facts suggest. Think what a 
turn 0. Henry would give to the plot — in the last para- 
graph. But do not try to write like O. Henry. He 
gained his success by writing differently from anybody 
else. Go thou and do likewise. 



196 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



We are giving below a few newspaper items — chosen 
just as they came to us in the course of our breakfast 
scansion of the daily paper to show the kind of clip- 
pings one may make for his scrap-book of plots. From 
this general selection one may then select at leisure those 
best worth elaboration or those in harmony with one's 
own gift. 

The first of these casual clippings might well inspire 
a Gautier to write a ' ' Eoman de la Momie. ' ' The second 
might serve for a plot for a story as good as ' ' Somehow 
Good" by William De Morgan. 

e. e. s. 



Archeologists in Egypt un- 
earth a rock chamber containing 
the mummy of a headless young 
woman. On her breast lay a 
valuable necklace of carnelians 
and amethysts, inscribed with 
the name of Sesostris I, who 
reigned B. C. 1980-1935. In the 
tomb were a bronze mirror and 
three alabaster boxes of cos- 
metics. (Note : To understand 
the significance and horror of 
this one must recall what the 
Egyptians believed regarding 
the resurrection of the body and 
why they embalmed their dead 
and built pyramids over them.) 

A veteran of the World War 
found wandering in streets of 
Rochester. Cannot remember 
his name or how he got there 
but thinks he had married a 
girl and left her in Hotel Penn- 
sylvania, New York City. Bride, 
a Richmond girl, orphan, mar- 
ried two weeks before, found in 
the hotel, alarmed at disappear- 
ance of husband who had left 
three days before to collect back 
pay in Washington. Bride- 
groom had been aviator in 
Argonne offensive and had 
crashed in forest where he lay 
for three days unconscious. 



TRENTON, N. J.— A tomb- 
stone to tell the world he orig- 
inated the ice-cream soda is 
provided in the will of Robert 
M. Green. 

TOKIO.— logo Fuluda, a mil- 
lionaire lumber dealer, has mar- 
ried Miss Noka Oti, a Japanese 
girl who was kidnaped twenty 
years ago by strolling Chinese 
players and made their slave. 
Fuluda helped her escape from 
China last summer. 

Mary, fourteen years old, 
sophomore in high school, at- 
tempts to end her life because 
she was tired of being "nothing 
but a drudge as mother was." 
Since her mother's death two 
years ago she has taken care of 
father and three younger chil- 
dren, cooking and housekeeping. 
Her fattier had scolded her be- 
cause she had not paid the 
baker with the money he gave 
her. Here Mary took up the 
story: 

"I ran out of the house and 
hid under the front porch. I 
stayed there all night. I '11 say 
it was cold. I slept a little, I 
suppose, then I got up and 
walked around and then back; 



CRUDE STORY STUFF 



197 



to my hiding-place. I must have 
done this a half a dozen times. 
I was afraid of what father 
would do to me over the bread 
bill and determined to commit 
suicide. I had never stolen any- 
thing before, but we did n't have 
much fun, and I spent most of 
the bread money on my brothers. 
"I heard my father leave the 
house soon after six o'clock and 
then I went in. I wakened Willie 
and Johnnie and sent them to 
school. Then I sat and thought 
for an hour or two, wondering 
whether I really ought to end my 
life. I had been working too 
hard, with school and all, I 
guess, and finally decided to kill 
myself. I went into my room, 
shut the window, locked the door, 
and turned on both jets. When 
the room filled with gas I was 
sorry for what I had done and 
turned off the jets." 

A brown carrier-pigeon, ex- 
hausted and half-starved, arrives 
at a Brooklyn dove-cote. At- 
tached to its leg is a scrap of a 
manila bag on which is written 
with a lead-pencil : "Stranded on 
island 23-47; help." The owner 
of the dove-cote is sure the mes- 
sage came from his son who was 
lost in a sailboat two months 
before. 

A woman stayed in hiding in 
New York several days by regis- 
tering at a hotel under her own 
name and eating in the public 
dining-room. 

The formation of a dead men's 
club out of the 2000 ex-service 
men who. while living, are offi- 
cially listed as killed in action, 
is a probability. One of the 
"casualties" who was gassed and 
left on the field in Picardy has 
suggested the formation of such 
an organization. 

If present plans are followed 
out, this town of 250 buildings 
and dwellings will gather up its 
belongings, pack up its build- 
ings, and start moving a mile 
and a half distant. Motion-pic- 



ture cameras will grind away, 
preserving the unique record 6f 
a whole town sliding away on 
railroad tracks. 

Engagement wanted by actor. 
Small part, such as dead body or 
outside shouts. 

A man killed himself that he 
might prove his theory about 
returning spirits. 

Arthur states that over thirty 
novels and photoplays have been 
dictated to him by spirit messen- 
gers. His spirit advisers do not 
seek any reward for their literary 
feats. Their object is to sweeten 
and lengthen the life of man 
upon earth while assuring him 
of immortality. How could one 
arrive at the compensation of 
spirit directors and how pay 
them if a reasonable amount were 
determined ? 

The germs of unrest have in- 
fected even the beyond. When 
ghosts return these times, do 
they seek the gloomy calm of 
mossy manse or country land? 
They do not. They come galum- 
ping right where things are 
thickest and most modern. In 
New York they are haunting the 
trolley-cars. 

Sometimes the ghost merely 
rises up from behind a cemetery 
wall in the vicinity. At other 
times it canters down the road 
with a gravestone on its back. 
But when it actually hopped 
aboard a trolley, empty except 
for the conductor, and attempted 
to ride as a deadhead without 
paying any fare, nineteen stal- 
wart young citizens decided 
enough was a plenty. 

"I don't know what to do," 
moaned Mrs. Grace here to-day. 
"I 've tried hard to think of some 
way, but I just can't." 

She had just received a mes- 
sage from her first husband, 
Fred, who was reported "offi- 
cially dead" in France by the 
War Department in 1918. It 
read: 



198 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



"Just landed on Aquitania. Will 
leave immediately for home." 

"Fred went away in 1917," she 
said. "The next year he was 
reported dead. Later a body we 
supposed his was brought back 
and buried in the family lot here. 
I married again, a few months 
ago." 

War-risk insurance carried by 
Fred was collected by his wife 
months ago, she said. 

Ravenna, Italy. — The closing 
ceremony of the Dante celebra- 
tions was held here Tuesday. 
Fragments of the poet's bones 
stolen in 1865 and recovered 
shortly afterward were placed 
with the other parts of the skele- 
ton buried here. 

When "Diamond Jim" Brady 
decided to sell railroad supplies 
instead of being a hotel porter, 
he put all the money he had into 
a $100 bill, tore the bill in two, 
and sent one-half to a great rail- 
road man with this message, 
"The other half of this would 
like to see you." 

A court order directing Mrs. 
James to wear for thirty days 
each year under police guard the 
$100,000 pearl necklace of a rela- 
tive, in order to keep life in the 
gems through their contact with 
a human body, was issued by 



the superior court at San Fran- 
cisco. 

A Kentucky judge has taken 
under advisement the case of Old 
King, a blooded foxhound, on 
charge of murdering sheep. 

Will motor-cars in the future 
perfume our streets with the 
scent of attar of roses instead of 
the evil- smelling mixture which 
offends our nostrils as they 
pass? 

"Young barbarians all at play" 
at a state agricultural college 
committed an unpardonable of- 
fense the other evening for which 
they must reckon. They captured 
a famous cow-boy and by force 
shaved a mustache from his face 
that was the pride not only of 
the individual cow-boy but of 
the cow-boy profession. A ven- 
detta has been declared — the war 
of the shaven mustache. 

POSITION WANTED; STEN- 
OGRAPHER.— I am twenty-two 
and never expect to marry. I 
have n't bobbed hair nor do I 
chew gum. The boss's wife need 
not have any worries about me. 
I want a position where I will 
be able to save enough money 
some day to go to the South Seas 
and get away from people. 



VARIOUS ADVERTISEMENTS 

Hints of plots and personalities may be found in 
almost any advertisements of a personal character. An 
offer to swap off articles one is tired of shows a change 
of taste that the reader is curious to account for. The 
descriptions and adventures of missing men often bring 
up a vivid picture. 



EXCHANGE 

TYPEWRITER and case to 
swap for rifle, 6 by 8 tent, and 
fishing tackle. 



CLARIONET, E flat, low pitch, 
fifteen keys, foreign made, value 
$20. Will trade for .22 repeating 
rifle (not loaded). — C. E., Big 
Fork, Montana. 



BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES 



199 



ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNI- 
CA, twenty-nine volumes in full 
sheep binding, eleventh edition. 
I want a leather, or imitation 
leather, davenport and a Colt au- 
tomatic, .32. P. F. V., Malta, 
Montana. 

MISSING 

TELDEN, STELLA CLARA.— 

She was born in Aitkin County, 
Minnesota, on April 15, 1898, and 
moved with her parents to Gor- 
don, Wisconsin, in 1905. When 
she was eighteen years old she 
went with her parents to Bis- 
marck, North Dakota, where she 
disappeared on April 21, 1916, 
aince which time no word has 
been received from her, and no 
knowledge has been obtained as 
to what has become of her, or 
how she disappeared. She is of 
fair complexion, tall, with grey 
eyes, is good looking, and a 
fluent speaker. The little finger 
of both hands is quite crooked. 
Any information as to this young 
girl's whereabouts will be most 
gratefully received by her sor- 
rowing parents. 

SMITH. — I was put in a school 
in Tarrytown, New York, when 
I was one year old and I stayed 
there for ten years. When I was 
eleven years old I was taken by 
a family named Burns in Wells- 
rille, New York, who took me to 
a farm. I am now nineteen and 



would be very glad if I could 
see some of my relatives. I joined 
the army for three years so as 
to get a home. William J. 
Smith. 

OILMAN, BOY, formerly of 
Omaha, Nebraska. — He is about 
thirty-five years old, five feet 
nine inches tall, and has a scar 
on his upper Hp. He left Frisco 
in 1912 for Manila, Philippine 
Islands, went to Port Darwin, 
Australia, joined in a prospect- 
ing expedition in Northern Ter- 
ritory, and left Pine Creek with 
others for the coast. He was last 
heard of in Sidney in 1915, head- 
ing for the United States. It 
will be to his advantage to get 
in touch with his old partner. 

STARKE, ELBERT. — He is 

thirteen years old and small for 
his age, has light brown eyes, 
sallow complexion, straight 
sandy hair, and is very talka- 
tive. He disappeared from his 
home in Miami, Florida, on Oc- 
tober 27, 1921, and no trace of 
him has been found since. He 
had some money and it is 
thought that he may have gone 
on a boat, as he was anxious to 
take a trip to Cuba. His parents 
are grieving at his absence, and 
his mother is quite ill with 
worry. When he left he wore a 
khaki flannel blouse, knee-length 
trousers, and had no hat or 
shoes. 



CONFIDENCES, OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS, TITLES 

The lines of research suggested by the material just 
presented do not exhaust the pleasant possibilities open 
to the student. There is perhaps nothing more profitable 
than to be the confidant of others or to eavesdrop with 
discretion — on chair-car or Fifth Avenue bus. 

Spend ten minutes in jotting down confidences you 
have received that contain plot-germs. This game will 
give you some idea of how tenaciously your memory 



200 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

holds material that has literary value. I will share with 
you a number of confidences that have been given me, 
although some of the best ones I have I must keep 
secret. 

Last week a young man told me he had already writ- 
ten one hundred love-letters for friends of his in the 
working-class. "They always bring results," he as- 
serted. He had just brought to a satisfactory conclusion 
an interesting romance, of which he gave me the details. 

A few months ago a physician confided in me. He was 
attending a woman whose honesty had been several 
times under suspicion. Her husband was contemplating 
divorce because of this fact. 

"She 's a hystero-epileptic, ' ' said the doctor, "and 
hyper-suggestible. If ever a case against her comes into 
court I can prove that every time she steals the sugges- 
tion comes from her husband. " 

Here 's another one from a physician. His patient, a 
young married woman, confessed to him that there was 
negro blood hi her family, of which her husband was 
absolutely ignorant. She implored the doctor to kill her 
child if he should show the mark of the tar-brush. 

I once had two acquaintances who were reputed to be 
passionately devoted to each other. Both confided to 
me the intimate story of their friendship and each told 
me that she hated the other and would free herself from 
the tie except that she was afraid of the effect on the 
other. 

Now that complexes have become fashionable the 
mental specialist hears tales that would furnish Scheher- 
azade with material for another thousand and one nights 



EAVESDROPPING 201 

of entertainment. These confessions are often profes- 
sional secrets but clinical material may be put to use 
indirectly. 

Overheard conversations may also suggest stories. A 
second ten minutes may be profitably employed in jot- 
ting down conversations that have possibilities of de- 
velopment. 



Scene: Chicago rooming-house; eleven o'clock, hot 
summer night; my transom is open; also my window 
which leads to the fire-escape. 

Loud knock on the door of the room next to mine. 

Voice outside: "You 're wanted in the parlor, Miss." 

No answer. 

Louder knock and banging on the door. 

Voice outside : "You 're in, I know. I saw you come 
upstairs less than fifteen minutes ago. ' ' 

The door is tried ; it is locked. 

Voice inside: "Go back and tell him I won't see him. 
I won't! I won't!" 

Retreating footsteps; then their return. 

Voice outside: "You 'd better come quietly to-night, 
Miss. It will be less humiliating than in the morning." 

Voice inside: "I won't! I won't! I won't!" 

Voice outside : ' ' Suit yourself ! The key of the out- 
side door will be removed. Good-night. ' ' 



Scene : Chair-car between Chicago and Cleveland. 

Characters : Jolly gray-haired man and pleasant-faced 
woman, evidently a friend of long standing. 

She: "I hear Bobby 's married! Not twenty yet, is 
he?" 



202 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

He: "Sh! Sh! Softly, please. My wife 's ahead of 
us. She has n't heard yet/ ' 
She: ''Just gossip?" 

He: "I 'm afraid not. I '11 find out in Cleveland." 
She: "She 's a famous beauty." 
He : ' ' And my boy not yet twenty ! ' ' 



Scene: In line University cafeteria, with a distant 
prospect of eating. 

Characters: Dignified, massive, and deep-voiced theo- 
logian, and enthusiastic feather-weight theologian. 

First: "You heard the Nordsen lecture this morning? 
Greatest authority in the world on Armenia. Wonderful 
man!" 

Second: "Yes! And wonderful wife! She does all 
his translations for him from the original Armenian. ' ' 

First : " Ah ! His second wife, is n 't it % " 

Second: "His first was even more wonderful. She 
made his great discovery for him ; identifying the Aris- 
totelian quotation in the Gospels; that made him 
famous. ' ' 

First : " Ah ! Extraordinary man ! ' ' 

Literary invention, we have suggested a number of 
times, may start from character-conception or from 
plot-germ. There are two other possibilities. The 
story may be set off by a title or by a feeling for the 
atmosphere of a place. 

Individuals who find that titles fire their inventive 
capacity should be on the outlook for stimulating 
phrases. They should indulge in deliberate title-hunting. 

For such a purpose there is nothing better than the 
Bible. Take the following wonderful passage from 
Ecclesiastics: 



TITLE-HUNTING 203 

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but 
the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better 
to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear 
the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under 
a pot, so is the laughter of the fool. — Ecclesiastes, Chap. 
iVII, v. 4-6. 

That passage suggests to me at least eight possible 
titles, as follows : 

Wise Heart; 
The House of Mourning ; 
The Heart of Fools; 
The House of Mirth; 
The Rebuke of the Wise ; 
Crackling Thorns ; 
Under a Pot ; 
Fools' Laughter. 

And thou shalt make a veil of blue, and purple, and 
scarlet, and fine twined linen; with cherubim the work 
of the cunning workman shall it be made; and thou 
shalt hang it upon four pillars of acacia overlaid with 
gold, their hooks shall be of gold, upon four sockets of 
silver. And thou shalt hang up the veil under the clasps, 
and shalt bring in thither within the veil the ark of the 
testimony; and the veil shall divide unto you between the 
holy place and the most holy. Exodus, Chap. XXVI, 
v. 31-34. 

How many effective titles do you get from the above? 
There are a dozen at least. 

Spend ten minutes, the next time you have access to a 
library with open shelves, in scanning the backs of books 



204 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

with the intention of jotting down all the titles that you 
recognize as Biblical. My scansion resulted in the fol- 
lowing list : 

The Portion of Labor; 

The House of Mirth; 11 

The Fruit of the Tree ; 

Beside Still Waters ; 

On the Face of the Waters ; 

Bricks without Straw ; 

A Certain Rich Man ; 

Vain Oblations. 

The Gate of Death; 

The Altar Fire; 

Unto Cassar ; 

The Beginning of Wisdom ; 

The Inside of the Cup ; 

Hagar ; 

The Fourth Generation ; 

The Trimmed Lamp ; 

The Ivory Tower ; 

The Golden Bowl ; 

The Road to Damascus; 

Bells and Pomegranates. 

31 Through ignorance of the Bible several critics and doubtless 
many readers failed to catch the point of Mrs. Wharton's title. 
Picking out books by title is uncertain business at best. A mother 
who was ill and depressed sent her little daughter to the public 
library to get some ' ' cheerful books ' ' to read while she was kept 
in bed. The girl scanned the open shelves conscientiously and 
came back with Wharton 's ' ' The House of Mirth, ' ' Hugo 's ( ' The 
Man Who Laughs," Stevenson's "The Merry Men," and An- 
dreyev's "Ked Laughter." 

£. E. s. 



MOTHER GOOSE AND OMAR 205 

One should search for titles not only in Scripture but 
also in Mother Goose's immortal verses. Many an author 
has done so. " Jack and Jill," " Peter, Peter, Pumpkin- 
Eater, " "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" have 
proved popular book titles; while "Baa, Baa, Black 
Sheep," "Wee Willie Winkie," and "Georgie Porgie" 
are favorite titles among Kipling's readers. Jackie 
Horner and his famous pie suggest some fine titles: 
"Thumb and Plum," for a political story maybe, and 
there is the delightful " Hi Diddle Diddle" rime with the 
hinted elopement of Dish and Spoon. Baby Bunting, 
Little Miss Micffet, and Mistress Mary have all played 
title-roles. 

A literary friend of mine once confessed that he 
always carried with him in his suit-case when traveling 
two books, namely, the Bible and "Alice's Adventures 
in Wonderland. ' ' The author of ' ' Cabbages and Kings ' ' 
also no doubt sought inspiration from Lewis Carroll. 

Poets without number have furnished novelists the 
magic phrase that gave atmosphere to the story. Turn- 
ing casually to the "Rubaiyat" I listed the following 
titles in twenty-eight lines: 

Winter Garment ; 
Fire of Spring ; 
Bird of Time; 
On the Wing ; 
Leaves of Life ; 
Rose of Yesterday ; 
Singing in the Wilderness; 
Cash and Credit ; 
Distant Drums. 



206 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

As a final hint to the young fictionist one may urge 
him to turn over the leaves of Hawthorne's "Ameri- 
can Note-Books. ' ' He may find just the plot he wants. 
I give a few notes below just to show the rich mine that 
here waits working. 

A fairy-tale about chasing Echo to her hiding-place. 
Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror. 

An ornament to be worn about the person of a lady, as 
a jeweled heart. After many years, it happens to be 
broken or unscrewed, and a poisonous odor comes out. 

A series of strange, mysterious, dreadful events to 
occur, wholly destructive of a person's happiness. He 
to impute them to various persons and causes, but ulti- 
mately finds that he is himself the sole agent. 

A man, unknown, conscious of temptation to secret 
crimes, puts up a note in church, desiring the prayers of 
the congregation for one so tempted. 

To represent a man as spending life and the intensest 
labor in the accomplishment of some mechanical trifle, as 
in making a miniature coach to be drawn by fleas, or a 
dinner-service to be put into a cherry-stone. 

J. E. D. 
EXERCISES ON TITLES 

Here are a few more book titles for practice in identi- 
fication. State the origin of the title and explain its 
significance. If you do not know the book tell what 
you would expect it to be from the name. 

De Morgan's "Somehow Good.' ' 

Charles Reade's "Love Me Little, Love Me Long." 

Amy Lowell's "Ivory, Apes and Peacocks." 



TITLE GUESSING 207 

Hawthorne's "Twice Told Tales.' ' 

Nietzsche's "La Gaya Scienza." 

Shaw's "Arms and the Man." 

Hall Caine's "The Woman Thou Gavest Me." 

Kennedy's "The Army With Banners." 

O. Henry's "Cabbages and Kings." 

"Out of Nazareth." 
Allen's "The Choir Invisible." 
Hutchinson's "If Winter Comes." 
Hardy's "Under the Greenwood Tree." 

" "Far from the Madding Crowd." 
White's "In the Heart of a Fool." 
"The Old Order Changeth." 
" "Stratagems and Spoils." 
Butler's "The Way of All Flesh." 
Arnold Bennett's "These Twain." 

"Old Wives' Tale." 
"The Gates of Wrath." 
"Sacred and Profane Love." 
Dorothy Canfield's "The Day of Glory." 
"The Bent Twig." 
" "The Brimming Cup." 



a 



CHAPTER XIII 

PUTTING A FOOT-RULE ON THE IMAGINATION 

A man found guilty of murder is sent to the peniten- 
tiary for life. 

One day lie meets in the prison yard the man he be- 
lieved he killed. 

How will you unravel the plot-complication suggested 
by those two sentences? Will the convict make an 
effort to get a pardon ? Will he think he sees a ghost or 
believe he has lost his mind ? Will his anger flame up at 
sight of the man, and will he make another murderous 
assault? Or will he, as one mild individual suggests, 
take the opportunity to apologize? 

A surgeon is conducting a critical operation. 
The hospital bursts into flames. 

What will happen? Most readers think the surgeon 
will continue with the operation, although opinions differ 
as to outcome. He may be completely successful and 
save both himself and his patient. He may sacrifice his 
own life to that of his patient, or both surgeon and 
patient may be suffocated. 

"The patient comes to, and decides the operation has 
been a failure since he finds himself in peril of fire!" 

208 



LITERARY SYLLOGISMS 209 

"With a stroke of the pen, tragedy is converted to comedy 
and an amusing story suggested. 

A widow prays for weeks that God will punish the 
light-hearted couple next door. 

The young husband is killed in an accident. 

"It was a mean trick !" one young freshman comments 
indignantly, and "The widow ought not be so religious," 
remarks another. 

For the most part the plot is advanced by the sugges- 
tion that the widow feels great remorse and seeks to 
atone for her sin, or rejoices that God has answered her 
prayer. 

"Yea, God sees the sparrows fall regularly; fortu- 
nately he and I are not on speaking terms," is a con- 
clusion which suggests a grim life-story. 

An eminent scientist knows he has only a month to live. 
He is just on the verge of a great scientific discovery. 

He will tell his secret to his most eminent professional 
rival, is the most common conclusion ; or he 11 work 
harder and complete his discovery before he dies; or 
he 11 work himself to death before the month is over. A 
few think he will carry the secret with him to the next 
world; or he 11 make a greater discovery — what lies 
beyond death. 

Dramatic complications are suggested in other con- 
clusions. ' ' He tells his secret and does n 't die ; mistaken 
diagnosis." Or this: "His discovery is the secret of 
eternal life" — a sketch for a regular Hawthornian 
story. 



210 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

By using a series of sneh plot-complications and ask- 
ing for a solution from many individuals (try it as a 
parlor-game; it 's great fun!) you can do -two things. 
You can find out a great deal about your neighbor's 
mental processes, which as we have said repeatedly is 
excellent knowledge for a novelist, and at the same time 
you can find out things about yourself, which is even 
more valuable information. 

In order to measure ability of any kind one must have 
some sort of standard for comparison. In scientific 
work one is obliged to simplify conditions and if possible 
state the outcome in quantitative terms. 

It is not at all impossible to put a foot-rule on 
various forms of talent. Dr. Seashore has invented a 
scale for measuring special musical capacity. He has 
modernized the test. You can purchase the necessary 
material for giving it in the form of phonograph- 
records and test the whole family at once as an after- 
dinner recreation. 

Literary capacity can also be measured. "A Test 
Series for Journalistic Aptitude ' ' has been standardized 
by Max Freyd and reported in the "Journal of Applied 
Psychology .' ' It is being tried out in various schoola 
of journalism as a practical method of predicting suc- 
cess or failure in the newspaper world. 

Mr. Freyd lists the following traits as responsible for 
good reporting : 

High degree of intelligence ; 
Broad range of information, especially on current 
events ; 



TESTS FOR JOURNALISTS 211 

Good memory ; 

Social ability ; 

"Nose for news"; 

"Nerve"; 

Keen interest in reporting ; 

Language ability. 

Mr. Freyd gives tests for all traits except social ability, 
"nerve," and interest in reporting. 

Capacity for writing short-stories, plays, and novels 
demands some traits other than those listed as essential 
for a journalistic career, notably dramatic sense, under- 
standing of character, ingenuity in invention (frequently 
possessed by the reporter!), feeling for the emotional 
value as well as the dictionary -meaning of words, and 
natural understanding of the logic of the emotions. 

The questionnaire sent out by a well-known corre- 
spondence school for photoplay-writing gives exercises 
for testing the student's dramatic perception or insight 
and his capacity to develop a problem situation crea- 
tively. These are obviously the crucial traits for the 
writer of silent drama. It would be a profitable matter 
if the foot-rule could be put early on the student's mind. 

Very little has been done by laboratory psychologists 
in devising and standardizing tests of creative capacity 
in character or plot work. The "Times" Personals 
afford excellent opportunity for general scouting pur- 
poses in the field. But a simpler form of material is 
desirable for rating oneself in comparison with the 
average or talented person. 

As a bit of pioneer work I have devised literary 



212 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

syllogisms, samples of which are given above, and have 
tabulated the conclusions or solutions obtained from a 
large number of persons. On the basis of this tabulation 
I have assigned values to the different kinds of conclu- 
sion offered by my students. I am giving here a series 
of these " literary syllogisms. ' ' The reader should write 
down the conclusion that comes to him on reading each 
syllogism. After he has completed the series he should 
turn to the rating scale given below and grade himself 
on each conclusion. He should then add the scores ob- 
tained on each syllogism to get his total grade. The 
highest possible grade would be 100, but anything over 
70 would be passing. 

Ten syllogisms are included in the experimental series. 
They are as follows : 

1. Lizzie borrows without permission her mistress's 

silk parasol. 
She gets caught in a heavy rain. 

2. Two families are very friendly. 

The son of one and daughter of the other elope. 

3. Maude loses her engagement ring. 
Her rival finds it. 

4. An old woman buries her money in the back-yard. 
Her chickens dig it up. 

5. A man kills a friend. 

He is drawn on the jury that tries the man sus- 
pected of the crime. 

6. After a hard fight Smith is elected governor of his 

State. 
Inauguration day he loses his memory. 

7. A poor young man writes a great play. 

A millionaire offers to buy it in order to produce it 
in his own name. 



SUPPLY THE THIRD LINE 213 

8. A woman has a dual personality. 

She shifts her personality whenever she sees a 
funeral. 

9. A young girl cries all night. 
She is married next day. 

10. A successful politician has in early life served a 
term in the penitentiary. 
He discovers that his political enemies are going to 
publish the fact. 

Before citing sample conclusions by comparison with 
which the reader may grade himself, I wish to give 
briefly the general principle of grading which I obtained 
from study of a large number of conclusions. 

Many readers of the syllogisms merely stated in other 
words what was given in one or both of the propositions. 
There is no advance whatever; no suggestion of further 
complication; or of a solution of the one suggested. 
This outcome I call a circular reaction and mark 0. I 
shall not give samples of it for the separate syllogisms 
as it is a fairly obvious matter. A reader who writes 
after the first syllogism, "It rains on the parasol," is 
giving a circular reaction. 

When the situation is slightly — very slightly — ad- 
vanced I give a grade of 2. In the first syllogism I 
would so grade the conclusion "The parasol is ruined. " 
I also grade an evasive conclusion or a vague one 2. 

The grade of 4 is given for a conclusion that advances 
the plot more definitely than does the one just cited. 
For example, "Lizzie is cured of borrowing.' ' 

The grade of 6 is given to conventional and popular 
plot-solutions that are furnished by a large number of 
persons. They are often the common-sense solutions. 



214 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



"The mistress loses both Lizzie and the parasol/' is an 
example. 

For the more original and more dramatic conclusions 
the grades of 8 and 10 are reserved. 

I purpose now to give samples for each grade of con- 
clusion for each of the ten syllogisms. The reader must 
do the rest. 

syllogism 1 

Grade 2. The parasol is ruined. 

Lizzie feels bad. 

Lizzie returns with a dripping parasol. 

The mistress is angry. 
Grade 4. Lizzie is cured of borrowing. 

Little left of Lizzie 's next month 's salary. 

Looks bad for Lizzie ! 
Grade 6. Mistress loses both Lizzie and the parasol. 

Lizzie seeks new employment. 

Lizzie afraid to go home. 
Grade 8. Lizzie is dismissed but rehired by husband; 
too good a cook to lose. 

The parasol shrinks. 

Lizzie borrows another parasol. 
Grade 10. Lizzie lies about ruined parasol and is caught. 

In a desperate attempt to save the parasol, 
Lizzie climbs into a garbage-can. 

There 's a flood ; the borrowed parasol saves 
Lizzie from drowning. 



syllogism 2 

Grade 2. "Was it necessary to elope ? 

Families opposed to marriage. 
Grade 4. Parents overtake them and bring them home. 

Lovers killed in auto-wreck. 



THE GAME OF SYLLOGISMS 



215 



Grade 6. Each family blames the other ! 

Families rejoice; just what they were aim- 
ing at! 
Grade 8. Lovers irritated by families ' attentions. 

Flight from a fashionable wedding, just on 
the eve of it. 
Grade 10. Fled to avoid marriage with each other ; each 
had a partner for flight; double wedding. 

syllogism 3 

Grade 2. Maude is angry. 

It won 't do the rival any good. 

Maude should advertise for the ring. 
Grade 4. Rival returns ring. 

The fellow buys another engagement ring. 
Grade 6. Hard for Maude to explain. 

Quarrel and broken engagement. 
Grade 8. The suitor goes with the ring. 

Rival wears ring and pretends she is en- 
engaged. 
Grade 10. Rival thinks Maude lost ring on purpose. 

Rival claims Maude's suitor gave her a dup- 
licate of the ring. 



syllogism 4 

Grade 2. She '11 be surprised when she finds her money 
gone. 
Chickens rarely dig so deep. 
Money should be deposited in banks, not in 
back-yards. 
Grade 4. She picks the money up and puts it in the 
bank. 
She changes her hiding-place. 
Chickens leave the money where they find it. 
Grade 6. A tramp finds it. 



216 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



Money found by small boy and returned to 

owner. 
The money is stolen and the police called out. 
Grade 8. The chickens lay golden eggs. 
Oh, that chickens had brains ! 
Money found by son, who invests it in oil. 
Grade 10. She picks the money up and advertises for the 

owner. 
She kills her chickens just as the price of 

eggs is soaring. 
A child finds'the pot of gold at the end of the 

rainbow. 

SYLLOGISM 5 

Grade 2. Many men make many mistakes. 
All depends on the man himself. 
Things that never happen. 
Grade 4. His conscience hurts. 

He '11 commit perjury. 
Grade 6. He confesses his guilt at last moment either to 

the jury or in open court. 
Grade 8. Only one of the jury to find the suspect 
innocent. 
Only one of the jury to find the suspect 
guilty. 
Grade 10. Eleven men on the jury pronounce the sus- 
pect not guilty; the guilty man by his 
insistence on the other man's guilt betrays 
himself. 
He tells the jury why he killed his friend; 
they acquit both him and the man on trial. 



syllogism 6 

Grade 2. Smith's wife loses her memory. 
What good has his work been ? 



SUGGESTED ENDINGS 



217 



Too much for Smith ! Too much of the un- 
usual. 
Grade 4. The State Government is thrown into chaos. 
He must resign, unable to carry on. 
Wasn't fit person in first place; mentally- 
weak. 
Grade 6. He must resign; unable to carry on without 
knowledge of past events. 
Eeads resignation after taking oath of office. 
It will make no difference ! 
Grade 8. His colleagues attempt to carry on for him. 

He forgets to go to inauguration ; search for 

him. 
Conscience is defeated. 
Grade 10. His double assumes the office. 
He fakes a memory. 

Makes an extraordinarily good governor, has 
no memory for campaign promises. 

syllogism 7 

We can buy anything with money. 

Everything has its price. 

It 's nice to be able to buy brains ! 

He sells the play. 

He refuses to sell. 

Cannot afford to sell birthright for a mess of 
pottage. 

He holds out and wins both money and fame. 

He borrows money and produces it himself. 

He consents but as time for production ap- 
proaches repents and burns the play. 

He accepts the offer, assumes leading role, 
and ruins the play. 

syllogism 8 

She shifts back after the funeral. 
She should not lead that kind of a life. 



Grade 


2. 


Grade 


4. 


Grade 


6. 


Grade 


8. 


Grade 10. 



Grade 2. 



218 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



Grade 4. She causes a disturbance at funerals. 

Her friends have difficulty in knowing her. 
Grade 6. She avoids going to funerals. 

A funeral in early life caused a psychic 

trauma. 
She is afraid of death. 
Her family try to keep her away from 
funerals. 
Grade 8. She is wildly happy at funerals and causes 
much hard feeling. 
She is a paid mourner. 
She changes often ! Her husband is sexton. 
She must be an undertaker. 
Grade 10. She has a weird passion for funerals and 
commits a murder. 
She never knows who is being buried. 
Alas ! She lives near a grave-yard. 
She shifts at her own funeral — maybe, 

syllogism 9 



Grade 2. She does not wish to marry. 
She does not love the man. 
Grade 4. She '11 have to use a lot of powder next *day. 

Eleventh hour repentance. 
Grade 6. She 's in love with some one else. 

She 's replenishing the family fortune. 
She 's just learned that the groom is not 
wealthy. 
Grade 8. The suspense is terrible ! 

At close of the ceremony she confesses that 

she hates the groom. 
A red-eyed bride ! 
Grade 10. She falls in love with her husband after the 
ceremony. 
Good practice; a man always grants the re- 
quests of a weeping woman. 



STORY LOGIC 



219 



He 's in for a hard time. I pity the man in 

the case. 
She 's marrying the man to take vengeance 

on him. 

syllogism 10 

Grade 2. He is out of luck. 

All reputable politicians and bootleggers 
serve at least one term. 
Grade 4. He resigns. 

He awaits the decision of the public. 
He defends himself. 
Grade 6. He calls a mass-meeting and tells the story of 
his life. 
He admits the charge and asks the people to 

judge him by his later record. 
He was innocent. 
Grade 8. He tries to bribe his enemies. 

He finds out something just as bad about his 

enemies and threatens to publish that. 
He hires a gunman. 
Grade 10. He beats his enemies to it ! 

He decorates the State with bill-board posters 
advertising his history and announcing his 
political ambitions. 
His case serves as text for a fiery revivalist. 

Dr. Kate Gordon has devised an interesting exercise 
for study of the dramatic judgment and she has kindly 
permitted me to reproduce it. 

Miss Gordon writes: 



As an introduction to the question "What is dra- 
matic?" I chose twenty-five incidents which seemed to 
offer a considerable range of dramatic quality, and sub- 



220 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

mitted them for judgment to a number of persons 
(eighty-five in all). Among these people about twelve 
were well-versed in the drama. It was conceded at the 
outset that the treatment of incident means much, that 
a great playwright may make almost anything dra- 
matic, and that a poor one may spoil almost anything. 
But unless the treatment means everything, some situa- 
tions are inherently more dramatic than others, and it 
ought to be possible to see some difference in the ones 
here given. The printed page shown to these judges 
was as follows : 

"Twenty-five situations are here presented in the 
briefest outline. Some are dramatic and some are un- 
dramatic. If a situation seems to you to have dramatic 
quality mark it plus (+) ; if it seems lacking in dra- 
matic quality mark it minus ( — ) . 

"No definition of 'dramatic' is offered here, but the 
reader is reminded that a situation may be pathetic or 
terrible or spectacular or comic without being therefore 
dramatic. For example: 

" (a) 'A man is slowly sinking in a quicksand 
at the foot of a cliff. He is alone and has no 
chance of escape. ' This is pitiful and terrible, but 
not, as it stands, dramatic. It should be marked 
thus (— ) 

"(b) Add, however, that 'His brother stands 
on the cliff, rope in hand, ready to save him if he 
will disclose an important secret/ and this situa- 
tion becomes dramatic. Mark is thus (+) 

"(c) 'Ina Roman circus the people are leaving 
their seats to go home, and the attendants are 
dragging out the bodies of the gladiators who have 
been killed.' This moment is spectacular but not 
dramatic. ( — ) 

"(d) 'Two men are quietly drawing lots to see 
which shall commit suicide. It is a modern form of 



TEST YOUR DRAMATIC POWER 221 

duel/ Though not spectacular this is a dramatic 
moment. (+) 

"Some of the following episodes have heen used as 
play material, and some might be so used. Please judge 
them as they stand. If you think a situation could 
easily be made effective on the stage give it a plus sign, 
if not, a minus sign. (If you cannot decide put down a 
question-mark.) 

"1. A priest is in the court-room where he sees 
an innocent man in danger of being condemned to 
death. In order to save him the priest is tempted 
to reveal a secret which he has heard in the con- 
fessional. 

"2. A doctor is watching a patient whose fever 
is at its critical point. At the bedside the sick 
man 's family is kneeling and weeping. 

1 ' 3. The marriage-service is performed, without 
interruption, for a great military hero and a beau- 
tiful young girl. 

"4. A woman is pleading for her son's pardon. 
The governor, to whom she appeals, loves her, but 
tries to resist her entreaties from motives of duty. 

"5. A ten-year-old girl was carrying across the 
street a child who was almost as large as herself. A 
bystander said: ' Is n't he too heavy for you?' 
And she answered: 'Oh, he 's not heavy. He 's 
my brother. ' 

1 ' 6. A miserly old man is told by a famous sur- 
geon, in the presence of other people, that an opera- 
tion which would cost a thousand dollars might 
save his son 's life. 

"7. A woman walks into her husband's office 
and sees him kissing his pretty young stenographer. 

"8. A drunken sailor pursues a young girl to 
the top of a cliff, where she must either be over- 
taken or throw herself from the cliff into the sea. ( ) 

"9. A man is sitting alone in his office when the 



222 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

telephone rings. The audience knows, though he 
does not, that a dictagraph has been concealed in 
the room. He carries on an incriminating conver- 
sation over the telephone. ( ) 

"10. A mill-owner buys from one of his own 
employees the patent rights to an invention, so that 
he may prevent its development and use by com- 
peting firms. ( ) 

"11. An embarrassed young man tries to ask a 
lady for her daughter's hand in marriage. The 
mother, mistaking his meaning, accepts him for 
herself. ( ) 

"12. An artist, who has worked for years in 
great poverty, receives in the -morning mail two 
letters. One announces that he has won an impor- 
tant prize, and the other that his uncle has left him 
a fortune. ( ) 

"13. A young lawyer has been assigned, as his 
first important case, to the prosecution of a woman 
accused of crime. He sees her for the first time in 
court and recognizes his long-lost sweetheart. ( ) 

"14. A girl, in defiance of her wealthy father's 
wishes, has worked her way through college. On 
the morning of her graduation she reads in the 
newspaper the announcement of her father 's bank- 
ruptcy. ( ) 

"15. A congressman votes in favor of an in- 
iquitous bill, because by so doing he hopes to gain 
support for a good one. ( ) 

"16. When Handel was a young man he was 
invited to become the organist in a certain church. 
Upon his arrival he was told that whoever took this 
post was expected to marry the daughter of the 
preceding organist — a lady sixteen years older than 
Handel. ( ) 

1 1 17. King Solomon judged between two women 
which was the mother of a living child. And the 



WHICH IS MOST DRAMATIC? 223 

king said, 'Bring me a sword/ And they brought 
a sword before the king. And the king said, 
1 Divide the living child in two and give half to the 
one, half to the other. ' ( ) 

' ' 18. A public speaker, stepping upon the plat- 
form to make the most important speech of his life, 
falls in a faint before the whole audience. ( - )] 

"19. A convict made his escape from prison 
and started for the mountains, when a large blood- 
hound was set upon his trail. The man made 
friends with the bloodhound and took him along 
to the mountains. The dog cost two hundred 
dollars. ( ) 

"20. An army officer is about to send one of 
two men on a specially dangerous mission. He is 
at liberty to send either one, and he is in love with 
the wife of one of them. 

•'21. An old couple sit by the fire talking of 
their absent son, whom they have sent to fight for 
his country. A messenger comes and tells them 
that the son was killed in a preventable railroad 
accident before he reached the trenches. ( ) 

"22. 'Then Jael, Heber's wife, took a nail of 
the tent, and took a hammer in her hand, and went 
softly unto him, and smote the nail into his tem- 
ples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was 
fast asleep and weary. So he died. ' ( ) 

1 ' 23. Milton, afflicted with blindness, dictates to 
his daughters the immortal lines of ' Paradise Lost. ' ( ) 

"24. An aviator, flying at night, decorates his 
aeroplane with electric lights. After 'looping the 
loop' ten times in succession he returns safely to 
earth. ( ) 

"25. ' Then came Jesus forth wearing the crown 
of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith 
unto them, Behold the man ! 

" 'When the chief priests therefore and officers 



224 PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 

saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, 
crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, 
and crucify him; for I find no fault in him.* " ( ) 

I have given the test to a number of persons in addi- 
tion to those tested by Miss Gordon. The returns tabu- 
lated for 104 individuals follow. By means of the 
table the reader can determine the degree to which his 
judgment is in harmony with that of the majority. If 
there is a conspicuous failure to agree, he should con- 
tinue his self -analysis until he finds out what factor in 
his make-up accounts for his difference in reaction. 

Number Dramatic Doubtful Undramatio 



13 


102 


1 


1 


4 


101 


1 


2 


20 


96 





8 


1 


91 


1 


12 


17 


85 


2 


17 


8 


84 


3 


17 


9 


83 


1 


20 


25 


76 


3 


25 


7 


76 


5 


23 


11 


67 


1 


36 


6 


67 


2 


35 


16 


44 


6 


54 


22 


34 


3 


67 


19 


23 


1 


80 


14 


21 


2 


80 


12 


21 


3 


80 


18 


17 


3 


84 


21 


17 


3 


84 


15 


16 


2 


86 


2 


16 


3 


85 



A PERTINENT QUESTION 225 



Number 


Dramatic 


Doubtful 


Undramatic 


10 


11 


1 


92 


23 


9 


2 


93 


24 


5 


1 


98 


5 


4 


3 


97 


3 


1 





103 



Miss Gordon continues: 

The question whether the majority is right is a per- 
tinent one but for lack of any other available standard 
I take this, and assume that the incidents which stand 
near the top of the above list are essentially more dra- 
matic than those which stand near the bottom. 

In order to define what is dramatic for this group of 
persons we must see what the quality is which is con- 
spicuously present, say in No. 13, No. 4, No. 20, which 
gradually diminishes through No. 6 and No. 16, and 
which is conspicuously lacking in Nos. 3, 5, and 24. 

J_ B. D. 



CHAPTER XIV 



MISCELLANEOUS PERSONALS 



We have all heard of the Irishman who found the 
Dictionary fine reading except that the chapters were 
so short! The same criticism may be applied to the 
Personals. But we give here a variety clipped from the 
London ' ' Times, " in the hope that the reader will 
amplify them. 

Dip in yonr net wherever the stream looks promising 
and may yon capture a story ! 



CORNY. — You cold - blooded 
monster. — Shamus. 



T YDIA — Blot me right out of 
-" your memory ; go o d - by. — A. 



/ 



BEATRICE.— The scientific ped- 
agogue says "Finis." — Vene- 
tia. 



TfENETIA. — An unwarranted 



conclusion. — Beatrice. 



(ne 



ENTLEMAN (newly poor) 
OFFERS SHARE RUN- 
ING his SPORTING CAR. 



SAVOY, 17th.— Would taU un- 
known American, only two 
days in England, care to dance 
again? — Pink Lady. 



pHUM — Your revels will lead 
^ you into a position which I 
fancy you wiU find embarrassing. 
—Clifford. 



HARRY.— We're the two guys 
frnm Tla-aronn Oit-w TUT en/1 



J. 



from Dawson City. — M. and 



U MPS.— You would if 
could, I know. — Sol. 



you 



KIDDIE.— A tiny little 'possum 
ma honev. — Adirondack. 



226 



WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THIS? 



227 



>A— pa — pa — pa— pa — pagena. 



"17 AIR Mustache and spats, Hay- 
- 1 - market, 3:15, 11th.— My one 
regret is that I did not hare 
my riding-whip with me. — Old 
Fogey. 



TjiALCHION.— EYidently the tail 
[*• wags the dog. — Kay. 



Gnp — Does a gentleman wage 
• •*- • war on the mud that be- 
spatters him ? — Key. 



"DOSA. — You are a cheat; honor 
- L *' is not sacred to you; and it 
is poor wit to make me the butt 
of your raillery. — L. 



DRAGONFLY. — Treat them 
kindly, and they will yet 
feed out of your hand. — Peoni. 



"DOBERT— Let us know when, 
-"' that lictors may be in evi- 
dence to clear the way. — Pic. 



YC —Those that live in glass 
'&' houses should not throw 
stones. — X. A. 



BETTY.— When a maid is bold 
and gay, maiden may go 
hang-a. — Orpheus. • 



T OUIS A.— Wonderful to relate, 
1 - J there were three spiders. — 
ROB. 



THHIS IS THE LAST TIME.— If 
x you have any just cause, &c, 
speak, or hold peace. 



VERXES.- 



You may laugh and 
sneer now, you braggart, 
but your coward knees will knock 
when face to face with your des- 
tiny. — 'Hilarion. 



BUSTY.— But it shows the 
cheese is ripe. — B. 



"TICKLERS" and suchlike 
- 1 - forms of "fun" are all very 
well, but the victims should be 
carefully selected. The writer 
had an expensive pair of eye- 
glasses smashed owing to the 
hilarity of the revelers on New 
Year Eve.— Bat. 



WILL any one give an ex- 
Major a JOB? Good all- 
round sportsman, keen golfer, 
ex-champion lawn tennis: good 
organizer and administrator; ex- 
cellent credentials. 



BLACK DRESS.— I enjoyed see- 
ing you. I wonder when I 
shall again? — Eiffel Towers 



PUSS. — Phenomenally poor pros- 
pects ; positive possession 
portends pitiless pitfall; possess 
patience. — Prudence. 



U.A. 

happy.- 



-Treat me as you do 
"Nigger" and I shall be 
-Sweet William. 



WIDOW TWANKAY.— Reflect 
upon it and we will see. — 
Ye Rustic. 



228 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



rpOBY.— Manners maketh the 
J- man, not & fat cheqne-book. 
—Hilda. 



TWINKLE-TOES. — Tell me 
through Box D.579, The 

"Timea." 



Yseult. 



-Evidently a 



KITTEN.— 
thought. 



Every wish 
— Bigdog. 



and 



BIGDOG. — When and where did 
you see "Kitten"? Give 
some clue for identification. 



M 



>AH. — Which was it, 
or stars? — Dainty. 



snakes 



DAINTY.— If you had consulted 
your mirror on your return, 
you would have known. — M'ah. 



"I^ELICITE.— The bread and but- 
A ter was cut very thin.— 
Percy. 



DUX JUVENIS: Esne felix? 
Bellum gero contra inimi- 
cum 



suosque. 
Tecum semper, 



Nolo 
-Fortis. 



storkum. 



XTAUTCH GIRL. — Omar, 
^ LXXIV.— Popinjay. 



CBERIE.— Did you call for 
wine, sir? Use the right 
bell, and the best that 's left is 
thine; no one more delighted 
than self to see you better again. 
— Cheri. 



CQUIRREL.— Frozen right out. 
O —Mflvflv. 



-Mayfly 



'T'ELEPATHY.— Nothing would 
-■- induce me to return. It is a 
washout. — D. 



DLUB MOON.— Suggest your re- 
±J marks misunderstood ; might 
be inclined to discuss if way was 
opened up. — Dutch Oven. 



TGNIS FATUUS.— Nous verrons 
A si vous etes homme de parole. 
—Les Elegantes. 



E keye to ye mystery can be 
procured if ye apply to ye 
concierge ft 38. 



TV/TANY applications to "ye con- 
**■*- cierge at 38" have failed to 
produce "ye keye." Want some- 
thing better.— W. W. 



WHEN distributing the frag- 
ments and the crumbs, 
don't forget the poor old Gold- 
fish. 



WEE PETER. — We know 
1 enough to make you squirm, 



but we ain't a-goin' 
light. 



to tell.— Star- 



PERSONALS FOR PRACTICE 



229 



TMLOT. — Diamond cut diamond 



ho! ho! ho!— Wem. 



ORANGE.- 
Apple. 



-Agree to charges. 



VISITORS to LONDON are per- 
" haps unaware that it is not 
customary to offer gratuities of 
sweetmeats to policemen for serv- 
ices rendered. — Bow Bells. 



DON. — In future don't meddle 
with that which does not 
concern you. — Ella. 



-VTOUNG AMERICAN, hobby vio- 

- 1 lin, desires temporarily to 

join jazz-band for practice pur- 



THREE ANTI-JAZZERS, fed up 
with "holiday resorts," want 
HOME for August ; suggestions 
welcomed. 



LAVINIA. — Have heard 
dubbed 



you 

me "Knight of the 
Rueful Countenance" ; until I 
find you it will express truly my 
feelings; won't you divulge? — 
Hector. 



TEAN T.— Black 2, white 
** white 3, blue 2.— Amos. 



BERT.— Idiot- why go tilting at 
windmills ? — Ttptip 



XI UGH.— Plenty of white ele- 
xx phants here. — P. 



always "if I do 
"if I do that"; I 

refuse ; don't pester me any more. 

— C. 



NOO.— "If!" 
this" or 



VI. — You cannot conceal your 
thoughts any longer, for I 
know them. Do not attempt to 
deny, deceiver that you are, that 
you regard J. L. as a shuttle- 
cock, to be sent hither and thither 
at your own capricious will. 



-Feathers unruffled ; calm 



VIII. 

ering with placidity. — Big 



'Un. 



"P — Strangers henceforth. — J. 



A Short-winded man wishes that 
**■ 'bus-conductors were paid 
by results. He might then stand 
a chance of getting on the omni- 
bus that he generally misses by 
a few seconds.— R. G. B. 



CT* — I recognized you in spite 
^ J- • of the "smoked windows" ; 
but don't worry, you have ad- 
dress if you care to make use of 
it, and remember that things are 
not as they were. — "Brown." 



<HEO. G — You rascal, I can s 
through your moves. — X2. 



CA —Have endured ten thou- 
•<"■• sand bitter hours; the 
old hopes and doubts rising be- 
fore me ; sometimes I fancy I see 
the light, and then suddenly all 
is oblivion. Obviously it cannot 
be endured much longer; have 
you any proposition — Yours, 
and yours only. 



230 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



T\AN. — Wait until it has worn 
1 - J off before consultation, else 
there is every possibility of an 
unqualified refusal which would 
be disastrous. — Bee. 



I.Z. 



-Have lost the ring again. 

— Nadia. 



BELLE. — Come to a decision 
quick, or cease. Word to 
"You" from "Me" eagerly 
awaited.— Z. Y. 



BLUEBIRD. — Somehow or other 
I went wrong; you know my 
weakness; pray forgive me. — G. 
M. 



HPOPPER. — Sandwiches safely 
-■- received. — Dolly. 



fl OLDEN ROSE.— Ever since 
*-* then, the day of days, I 
have been floundering about in 
the sea of perplexity and want to 
change my dream to a moonlit 
lake, with a fairy barque wafted 
by the zephyrs. — Moth. 



T? T —The Moth, having singed 
x ,±j. b er w i n g 8f i S more in- 
clined to reason. 



YBIL. — Fantastic dreams dis- 
turb my rest ; my mind is 
tortured by visions of gaunt and 
errisly specters; you alone pos- 
sess the philter that will charm 
away these wraiths. — Leonard. 



T EONARD.— It is strange that 
J - i you should be tormented so ; 
nevertheless, even if I can charm 
away the ogres, I do not know 
that you deserve It. — Sybil. 



YT (Tukoo.)— All twirls and 
•-L*- whirls.— Fottles. 



-Worried, crushed, and 
shaken. — The Rat. 



PANSY. — When in doubt, play 
trumps. — Hgy. 



JUNE ROSES.— I wonder if you 
ever think of that day of 
days. I do, often, and I just sit 
and think and think. — Stanley. 



CTANLEY— Identity advert, of 
►^ months ago just seen; does 
this help? — Mum. 



T ITTLE JOHN.— If you could 
J - J but take a share of the blame 
on your shoulders, I know you 
would. — Queenie. 



QUEENIE.— Evidently I am the 
sport of Fortune, to be 
tossed hither and thither like a 
shuttlecock. — The Troubadour. 



MT T — Bah! search if you 
•O >±j. -will, you will go 
away empty-handed. — Pippin. 



apAYRE LAD YE."— Deep in 
- 1 - this styx of Friars Black, 
Where soupy fog confounds one's 
track, Amidst the city's harrow- 
ing wrack, Thy loveliness up- 
holds me. — Lancelot. 



CROSSED WIRES 



231 



MT KNIGHT.— Wouldst have 
me sit at home at my 
spinning-wheel, like a maiden all 
forlorn, or answer the call of the 
chase when the huntsman winds 
hii horn? — Gwen. 



WEN.— Tell it the world !- 
Your Knight 



pRINCESS.— Where are you? 
A Pear not, the matter is set- 
tled^— Laughing Cavalier. 



OKEETER.— The sands of time 
° have nearly run out, and 
you must make your intentions 
known. Any further secrecy and 
I am finished. — Omaha. 



SPHINX.— Letter received, but 
not the expected enclosures, 
the lack of which means further 
delay and worry ; can not you 
hurry them up ?— Glowworm. 



MANY glow-worms are neces- 
sary to cast sufficient light 
on the problem you state. 



M. 



-My thoughts are always of 
you, dear heart. 



pETE. — I feel you are unhappy. 
*■ Can I do anything? Am 
strong. — Soul Baby. 



CAMEO. — Why pass me by? 
Do you cut too big a figure 
in your new surroundings? — Pep. 



CAMEO.— Sorry to hear of dis- 
tress: bear up for a time; 
the sun will soon shine again. — 
R. R. 



Tdear; are these "M" mes- 
sages yours? I made so 
sure they were until three others 
I sent on Dec. 2nd, 10th, and 
18th — after my reply to the last 
"M" one — met with no response. 
Look them up, and if the "Les 
temps passed" message was from 
you there is a letter waiting 
at the address you gave the 
"Times." End my suspense 
quickly, dear. — M. 



qX)DDLES.— I am like the poor 
■■- soul who sat sighing by a 
green willow-tree. — Judy. 



TODDLES.— We miss you so 
much ; won't you cheer us 
with a line?— "Ben Alywin." 



GYPSY LOVE.— Coldstreamer's 
father has authority to in- 



sist that all correspondence 
this nature should cease. 



of 



w 



AT TYLER.— See and believe 
—Ella. 



T^LLA.— Many thanks. Will do 
•*-* so on appearance of a simi- 
lar opportunity. — Wat Tyler. 



WAT TYLER.— Have the rats 
deserted the foredoomed 
ship ?— Ella. 



CHAPTER XV 

PERSONALS IN CONTINUITIES 

The Story of Quatre-Yingt-Quatre 

"We are not confined to a single item for a clue, for 
sometimes a correspondence runs for months. The 
Gondolier and 84 must have spent several hundred dol- 
lars on "Times" advertisements in their efforts to clear 
up mutual misunderstandings although they were also 
in communication by letter, by telegram, and by meet- 
ings on the green. Here is a bunch of their messages 
clipped by chance and not arranged in chronological 
order : 



GONDOLIER.— Now that the 
New Year is here, wiU you 
not give me the opportunity to 
clear the air?— 84. 



84 



—Neither by entreaty nor by 
' bribe. — The Gondolier. 



CO. 



Contemptible poltroon ! 

Yes, chuckle like the dy- 
ing miser who laughs his last on 
hearing his wealthy neighbor has 
become a bankrupt. — 84. 



GONDOLIER.— You seek to dis- 
arm me, to harass and per- 
plex me, with smooth and cun- 
ning words. I was foolish once, 
but now — you '11 find it a danger- 
ous enterprise. — Quatre-Vingt- 
Quatre. 



84/ 



Important news at last; so 
important that there must 
be no misunderstanding as to the 
means of conveyance; what say 
yon ? — Gondolier. 



232 



GONDOLIER AND 84 



233 



qa -In the coming New Year, 
°^*» pray let your thoughts be 
more charitable to the Gondolier. 



Cf\ —"Those friends thou 
•*-*• hast, and their adoption 
tried, grapple them to thy soul 
with hoops of steel." Would I 
had learnt my lesson before. — 
Quatre-Vingt-Quatre. 



IF it means what I think, I 
agree, and shall certainly not 
be offended. — 84. 



qa -When will, .you comply? — 



The Gondolier. 



GONDOLIER. — Have reached 
the limit. Choose between 
now or never. Will no longer be 
insulted.— 84. 



qa —Your long silence causes me 
°* # furiously to think, and the 
more I think, the greater embar- 
rassed am I, trying to solve the 
problem as to wherein I have 
offended; let me hear speedily, 
that my mind may be set at rest. 
— The Gondolier. 



THE GONDOLIER.— You have 
not offended me. Cease 
thinking and act. Inquire G. P.O. 
for returned letter 271, April 12, 
1920; also wire Nov. 2, 1920— 
message "Addressee said to have 
left that address two years ago." 
Then you will understand. — 84. 



qa —More mystified than ever; 
cv *» evidently you imagine that 
I expect others to act for me 
whilst I "recline at my ease." 
"Left two years ago." Have al- 
ways had a Wanderlust, so that 
indicates nothing. — Gondolier. 



(GONDOLIER.— Yours not to 
^ reason why; en avant and 
do not hesitate. — 84. 



GONDOLIER.— So glad. Now 
will you say how receive it? 
Proves my theories correct. — 84. 



qa —Show a little pity. — Gondo- 
0'« Iter. 



GONDOLIER.— Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! 
so now you know; choose 
your weapons. Shall it be coffee 
and pistols for two? — M. B. 



GONDOLIER.— Cannot return. 
Am kept away by letter, 
disconcerting, July 16, supposed 
written you. — 84. 



qa —July 16 not written by me; 
°* # am confused. — Gondolier. 



GONDOLIER.— Have a very 
important communication 
which will work wonders. How 
receive it? — 84. 



qa —It does not become us to 
°^** quarrel like two yokels at 
a fair. I promise you we shall 
go deeper into the matter another 
time. — The Gondolier. 



qa —Worse than ever; I know 
°^* # not whether I stand on my 
feet or my head. — Gondolier. 



GONDOLIER. — Thursday come 
to green, where you saw me 
last week, same time. Full ex- 
planation. — 84. 



234 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



qa -Have faith in me when I 
°^** say that rumor is a lying 
jade, and those that are respon- 
sible will answer dearly in the 
end. — Gondolier. 



Cf\ —The hare, no doubt, feels 
.\J. very brave when he tugs 
at the dead lion's beard.— The 
Gondolier. 



CA —Thank you very much. 
•^« I am delighted to see the 
change of attitude. — 84. 



— First prove yourself wor- 

• thy to march beneath my 1 

standard. — The Gondolier. 



qa —A direct question will re- 
°^' ceive a direct answer. 



In- 



sinuations will be ignored. 



qa —Here 's to your good health. 
°^*» — C. O. 



p ONDOLIER. — No possible 
^J" doubt whatever.— Tessa. 



o-i —I want to find out; but I 
°*» am loth to offend.— C. O. 



04^ —Would that you would 
°^** drink to me only with 
thine eyes, and I pledge you with 
mine.— C. O. 



The Wanderer and the Acorn 

If you find two lines too little to fire your imagination 
perhaps you will like the Wanderer-Acorn-Squirrel com- 
plex. Arrange the items as you please and interpret 
them as you must: 



A CORN.— Something 
*"*■ vnii are f»allincr! < 



tells me 
you are calling; dear one, if 
we could but meet but alas, this 
cannot be: nevertheless, I am 
still faithful and true. — Wan- 
derer. 



ACORN.— My Egypt, 'tis indeed 
you calling me, through an 
unknown agency at which many 
scoff; but we know my beloved 
Isis the joy and truth of such, 
and rejoice in our hearts, that 
though cruelly parted, we may 
continue with each other; The 
Wanderer lives for you alone. 



THOU wilt say the time is here. 
I placed an acorn. A Wan- 
derer may wish to water with 
one winter rain. — Squirrel. 



ACORN.— You can not hinder 
**■ it; neither can you clutch 
the wheel of Destiny and say to 
Time — "Turn Back" ; so yield to 
the inevitable and inexorable. — 
Wanderer. 



SQUIRREL AND ACORN 



235 



WANDERER.— If not I, then 
who can hope to save?— 



Acorn 



"CLEARED you were a cad. Now 
x quite sure of it. Finis. — 
Acorn. 



ACORN.— Yours received; what 
**■ has been done that such a 
judgment should be visited upon 
us? Oh! beloved, if you did but 
know the pain and remorse that 
I have endured, you would in- 
deed bear with me. — Wanderer. 



ACORN.— Forget me not, be- 
loved, for in the forthcoming 
ordeal I shall need your inspir- 
ing spirit to watch o'er me and 
succor me should adversity tem- 
porarily prevail. When girding 
on my armor I shall be animated 
with the thought that you are 
my strength.— The Wanderer. 



SQUIRREL.— One of these days 
you will be glad to feed out 
of my hand. — B. 



BETSY. — Requires freshening 
up with another coat of 
paint. — Wanderer. 



ACORN.— Have I offended— else 
** why this awful silence? 
Certain it is that my hopes are 
not yet dashed to the ground, 
and I shall foil them yet; but 
your help is necessary to me, and 
I ask for your aid. — Wanderer. 



p —What appeals ?— Acorn. 



A CORN.— The storm is driving 
**• all before it, and I am in 
fear lest my poor wee one should 
be torn up and destroyed. I see 
it as in a vision. — Wanderer. 



A CORN.— When all was pleas- 
**■ ant and blooming you took 
part in my play ; now that 
storm-clouds darken the sky and 
the icy winds of dread fate 
threaten me, I am left to bear 
the burden along. — The Wan- 
derer. 



A CORN.— Follow a shadow, it 
-^ still flies you; seem to fly it, 
it will pursue. — W. 



WANDERER.— Where are you 
hiding yourself? I am 
longing to hear from you; the 
sooner I do, the more quickly 
shall I be able to facilitate the 
dispatch of the Ms. — Acorn. 



A CORN.— Do you then believe 
-^ that a still tongue maketh a 
wise head? Or is it a fit of the 
sulks? 



WANDERER.— How can you 
be so heartless to scorn me? 
Your cruel words demand a swift 
retribution. 



A CORN. — Dear heart, you know 
**■ you are my all-in-all ; why 
have you not responded ? I would 
that we could overcome the ob- 
stacles that are causing so much 
despair. Despair, did I say? 
Rather sorrow, at our separation. 
— Wanderer. 



236 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



pLARISSIMA MIA. — You are 
^ distracted by the ignoble 
actions of those whom you have 
so correctly described. We shall 
yet scourge them with scorpions 
and weather the storm-clouds 
that do now threaten us. My 
tenderest thoughts are for thee 
and thy happiness. — The Wan- 
derer. 



A CORN, dear. What obstacles? 
■£*■ My life an open book. Any 
one can read who cares. 



w 



RITE to me.— Acorn. 



A CORN.— The fleeting days, 
■"■ they pass on, and still noth- 
ing is said or done and no signs 
of anything either. — Wanderer. 



ACORN. — I am angry; but not 
envious : my dull life has 
been too full of such moments. 
Wanderer. 




Clarry and the Count 

The tripartite correspondence between Clarry and the 
Count and Poppa presents an interesting problem. 
Arrange the items in suitable sequence and analyze the 
situation : 



CLARRY. — Poppa knows, thanks 
to the precious policy of do- 
ing things by halves. — The Count. 



CLARRY.— Heard from Poppa; 
unfavorable ; seems as though 
we shall have to paddle our own 
canoe. — The Count. 



POPPA hopes that both The 
Count and Clarry have not 
burnt their fingers too much. 



CLARRY. — Poppa now realizes 
that experience is the most 
effective schoolmaster; but were 
n't the fees heavy? — The Count. 



THE COUNT and CLARRY.— 
-■- Zounds! I will crop your 
ears close to the pate, as the 
hangman shears the rogues' 
heads at the pillory. — Poppa. 



npHE COUNT.— Let him; we 
x shall laugh yet, for the 
waves now are not so boisterous. 
— Clarry. 



n LARRY AND THE COUNT.— 
^ It has always been my proud 
boast that nothing should thwart 
my will, and now you young 
knaves have thrown down the 
gauntlet and I can not but ac- 
cept. — Poppa. 



MISSING LINKS 



237 



C LARRY. — Poppa hoists the 
signal of distress ; a wise old 
owl.— The Count. 



C LARRY.— Poppa is now left 
with a double balk.— The 
Count. 



C LARRY.— Poppa has made the 
amende honorable, so the in- 
cident is now closed.— The Count. 



SAN. — My son, ding, dong, ding, 
dong; may the bell ring out 
right merrily. — The Boys. 



POPPA. — Showing the white 
feather. — The Boys, 



POPPA. — Be 
Boys. 



a sport. — The 



T>OYS. — Yes! and knows how to 
*-* play it. — Poppa. 



LARRY AND THE COUNT.— 

Bitten off more than you can 
chew ? — Poppa. 



pODNT.— What a nerve, what 
^ sangfroid ! — Clarry. 



pOPPA.— Cheerio ! We should 
■■- n't like you to think we had 
forgotten you.— Clarry and The 
Count. 



CLARRY. — Poppa cannot crow 
now.— The Count. 



POPPA.— A cold douche ia an 
effective remedy. — Clarry. 



p LARRY AND THE COUNT.— 
^ I am highly appreciative, 
and your ingenuity inclines me 
to be indulgent. — Poppa. 



CLARRY.— Poppa isn't having 
any.— The Count. 



The Muleteer's Quest 

The Personals given below, though only part of a 
series and not in the order of publication, are enough to 
supply material for an adventure novel in the style of 
Eichard Harding Davis or a movie scenario for Douglas 
Fairbanks. Possibly it has been so used and these ad- 
vertisements were contrived to whet public curiosity in 
advance. If so, all the better for our purpose. The 
varied characters, the picturesque setting, the mysterious 
messages, should serve to stimulate the most sluggish 
imagination. 



238 



PLOTS AND PERSONALITIES 



PSCURIAL.— Does the muleteer 
•" approve of the proposed pro- 
ceedings ? — Grandee of Aragon. 



TV/TANANA.— Muleteer. 



IA/TULETEER.— Your servant 
■"J- awaits and is most atten- 
tive to command. — Hermes. 



MULETEER.— I am not a dolt 
to be alarmed; what you 
say will happen; I do not care 
a rap. — Mistletoe. 



G 



UERRA AL CUCHILLO.— The 

Muleteer. 



MADELLE. — At present the 
■*•' cloud is no larger than a 
man's hand ; I fear that it will 
grow and then burst upon us 
with all the fury of a typhoon. 
— Escurial. 



MULETEER.— Shake off slum- 
ber and beware. Awake! 
Awake ! 



"FRIENDS. — The call-bell has 
■*- rung and everything is set 
for the great act now impending. 
— Muleteer. 



TV/TULETEER.— What prudent 
- LV - L man would beard the lion 
in his den? — Mm, 



CHERE AMIE.— The popping 
of the corks made excellent 
music. — The Muleteer. 



WHITE MAN.— If Muleteer, in- 
»» nocent, proved, advt. time 
ago, "if you do not answer will 
divulge all I know." Same letter 
supposed to be in another's pos- 
session. Therefore letter taken 
to testify to false witness- 
White Woman. 



TXTULETEER.— Yes ! will do as 

• LVJ - suggested and our fortunes 
are made. — Napoli. 



p ^p —It is not for the pawn to 
v^ . x . argue ^th the fingers 
that move him from square to 
square. — The Muletaaf. 



MULETEER.— If I can.— An- 
■"•*• elent Mariner. 



pHILIPPE.— It shall never be 
-■- said that I deserted my 
friends in time of peril; rely on 
me and all will be righted. — The 
Muleteer. 



A LL WERE CALLED, but few 
■*■*■ responded to the call of the 
Muleteer; those that slight him 
may have cause to repent their 
folly later. 



T>LUE DEVIL.— You would like 
XJ to settle up at once and for 
all? You know not what you do 
when rousing the ire of The 

Muleteer. 



PITY OFFICE.— Would you 
^ AGREE to PUBLISH "THE 
MULETEER'S QUEST" when 
written ? 



piTY OFFICE.— Your inhuman 
^ insinuations are not worthy 
of an answer. — The Innocent Vic- 
tim. 



16 78 



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